“We cannot allow the slightest chance for the emergence of a world in which similar laws and lists are created,” he said.

Disguised as relocation, seventy years ago Hungary and other European countries saw the deportation of their ethnic Germans and “there was not a single sober-minded person, not even among the allied powers,” who challenged it, Orbán said, adding that “Europe capitulated” to both Nazism and “international socialism”.

He said the “sad common denominator” between the two ideologies was that regimes under both were willing to “load entire peoples into cattle wagons”. Orbán said the deciding factor in Europe’s reunification was the desire to make sure that such atrocities can never be committed in the future.

He added, however, that Europe’s security is gradually deteriorating and its way of life built on Christianity is at risk.

Orbán said the question today is not whether European nations could once again turn against one another but rather whether Europe would continue to exist. Orbán praised Hungary’s ethnic German community, saying that it forms an integral part of Hungarian culture.

The government supports the local German community’s right to retain its identity, he insisted.

Hartmut Koschyk, the German government’s commissioner for emigration and ethnic minorities, said the memorial day honouring Hungary’s ethnic Germans is a “good European example” of confronting the past, and thanked the Hungarian parliament, the government and the Hungarian people for observing it.

He praised Hungary’s minority policy and said Hungarian- German relations are friendly and strong.

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MTI photo: Illyés Tibor