Budapest, Europe's Capital of Anti-Semitism

[pjotr]

10/14/2010

Europe's Capital of Anti-Semitism

Budapest Experiences A New Wave of Hate

By Erich Follath

Budapest survived fascism and communism and blossomed after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now the Hungarian capital is experiencing a rebirth of anti-Semitism. The far-right Jobbik party is part of the government and Jews are being openly intimidated.

The city was always good for drama -- for intrigues about life and death, for eternal love and murderous betrayal, for torture, political heroism and sexual escapades. Founded by the Romans, improved by the Mongols and oppressed by the Ottoman Turks, Budapest has reinvented itself time and again, flexible in the flux of time. It has also served as a laboratory of sorts for varying political ideologies, from National Socialism to fascism to communism.

The United Nations has named four spots in the city UNESCO world heritage sites: (1) the panorama on the Danube River embankment, (2) the Buda castle district, (3) the Millennium underground railway and (4) Andrássy Avenue. The Hungarians wanted to use the magnificent boulevard, which was designed and built as part of preparations for the nation's mythical millennium celebration in 1896, to demonstrate that they had assumed their rightful place in the center of the continent. The country fell to the Nazis 40 years later. The Arrow Cross Party, a Hungarian national socialist party briefly in power from October 1944 to March 1945, was still driving Jews into extermination camps after Adolf Eichmann, the "architect of the Holocaust," had already fled.

The Real Budapest

The New York Times recently dubbed Budapest "Hollywood on the Danube." More international films are produced there than in any other European city, partly because Budapest has state-of-the-art production studios and receives generous tax breaks from the government. Most of all, however, it's because of the city itself. Budapest is Europe in a nutshell, the perfect double for Rome, Paris, Madrid or Munich and the ideal setting for all kinds of movies. Anthony Hopkins is currently filming a thriller there, while Nicole Kidman appears in a comedy being produced in Budapest. Earlier this year, Robert Pattinson, the star of the "Twilight" films, shot scenes on Budapest's landmark Széchenyi Chain Bridge for the upcoming film "Bel Ami."

But there is also news from the real Budapest, and the real Hungary of recent months.

Neo-fascist thugs attacked Roma families, killing six people in a series of murders. The right-wing populists of the Fidesz Party won a two-thirds majority in the parliament, while the anti-Semitic Jobbik party captured 16.7 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest party in Hungary, next to the Socialists. Unknown vandals defiled the Holocaust Memorial with bloody pigs' feet. A new law granted the government direct or indirect control over about 80 percent of the media. The television channel Echo TV showed an image of Nobel laureate and Auschwitz survivor Imre Kertész together with a voiceover about rats. Civil servants can now be fired without cause. Krisztina Morvai, a member of the European Parliament for Jobbik, suggested that "liberal-Bolshevik Zionists" should start thinking about "where to flee and where to hide."

Nazi Allusions

On May 14, 2010, Gábor Vona, the chairman of Jobbik, was about to make an appearance at the Hungarian parliament, whose seat is probably the world's most beautiful parliament building, a domed, neo-Gothic structure protected by bronze lions. Everyone was concerned that Vona would appear dressed in a fascist uniform from the past. As it happened, he showed up in a black suit, to the relief of many in the audience. But shortly before the swearing-in ceremony, the radical right-wing politician threw off his jacket to reveal a vest reminiscent of the uniforms of the Arrow Cross Party. Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described it as "sort of a Nazi outfit."

All of this is happening in a country that belongs to the European Union and NATO, a country normally associated more with the famous romantic relationship between Elisabeth of Bavaria, the former Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, and Count Andrássy, or the landscapes of the Puszta, or Hungarian steppes. Hungary is a country that was dubbed "the happiest barrack of the Eastern bloc" during the Cold War, where respectable citizens cut the hole into the border fences that put an end to the Iron Curtain more than 20 years ago. Now, in the wake of the Fidesz victory in communal elections on Oct. 3, the capital is getting a right-wing mayor for the first time, the 62-year engineer István Tarlós.

What's going on in Budapest?

'I Survived Two Dictatorships'

György Konrád, 77, loves Budapest. The renowned Hungarian author and recipient of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade owes his life to this city, even though the city led to the downfall of so many Jews. He could never have imagined ever turning his back on Budapest. He isn't someone who runs away from things. "But now I no longer think it's impossible that I could feel compelled to leave Hungary for good," says Konrád, leaning on his silver-tipped cane. "I survived two dictatorships. It's possible that the third one is now on its way."


Hungarian writer György Konrád

Of course, nowadays Konrád doesn't have to fear a knock on his door that might end in his being taken away. Nevertheless, he cringed when he heard the sound of riding boots and heels clicking together in the courtyard of a house adjacent to his summerhouse above Lake Balaton. "The paramilitary organization of the neo-fascists was conducting exercises there -- on the property of my neighbor, who was imprisoned under the communists, was my friend for a long time and has now apparently defected to the far right," says Konrád.

The incident reawakened painful, repressed memories of the village of his childhood, Berettyóújfalu, 225 kilometers (140 miles) from the capital. It was a place where storks built nests above the synagogue, where the air smelled of lavender and oak wood, where children lived for the taste of cheesecake and hot cocoa, and where the clatter of hoofs could be heard outside the family's hardware store.

"Ever since I was five, I knew that they would kill me if Hitler won," Konrád recalls. He was 11 when they began picking up other Jewish pupils from his school. Soon his father and mother were also taken away. In June 1944, as the new head of the family, he forced his sister to pack her things and, using the money in his parents' hidden safe, bought train tickets to Budapest. He never saw any of his classmates again. They had all been sent to the gas chambers.

[pjotr]

Part 2: Similarities to the End of the Weimar Republic

The Konrád children stayed with an aunt in Budapest, where they slept on the cutting tables in her glove-making business. They lived through curfews, betrayals and having to move to new places in the dead of night. They feared the Germans, but the members of the Arrow Cross Party, the Nazis' Hungarian henchmen, were almost worse. The normally mild-mannered Konrád describes them as "the scum of society." "The ghetto was an open hunting ground, where drunk Arrow Cross Party members would fire their guns as they pleased," he says. Their specialty was to shoot old women and little girls on the banks of the Danube, he says.

But it wasn't Budapest's fault, says Konrád, who later returned to his village, back to what had once been an idyllic place. But all he encountered there was horror. His world had been destroyed in the space of only eight months. "The house was filled with garbage and filth," he recalls. "A photo album was ripped apart, besmirched. Slowly I realized that what had been there before would never return."

More important, however, was the fact that his parents had survived in an Austrian concentration camp. When the communists seized the family's hardware store in 1948, they moved to Budapest. As a "son of a member of the upper class," Konrád was initially barred from entering the university. But he eventually managed to enroll, and studied literature and sociology. In 1956, he participated in the Hungarian uprising. He began to write. Like fellow democrats and dissidents Václav Havel, the Czech playwright and later president, and Polish journalist Adam Michnik, Konrád helped pave the way for the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Letting the Genie Out of the Bottle

Konrad can spend hours talking about his favorite places in Budapest, like Klauzal Square in the former ghetto, and about the hairdressers who rub his head with alcohol after washing his hair, "as if it were a religious relic." He raves about the Café Ruszwurm, where he finished the manuscript for his first novel.

So what did Konrad, who survived the Arrow Cross Party's rule, feel when he saw the head of the Jobbik party wearing an Arrow Cross uniform?

Contempt, he says after a short pause. Contempt for the mockery Vona had made of the Hungarian parliament. The same sort of thing, he adds, also marked the beginning of the end of the Weimar Republic. His contempt also extends to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who, according to Konrad, consciously doesn't shy away from using the rabble-rousing language of the far right for the sake of winning votes. "He has let the fascist genie out of the bottle, and it won't be inclined to go back inside," he says. "I don't like the Socialists, but I voted for them this time."


Prime Minister Viktor Orban


Gabor Vona, in his party uniform in the Hungarian parlaiment

Konrad pours a couple of glasses of apricot brandy and sighs. The conversation has been stressful for him. He has become an old man, the wrinkles on his face testifying to his long and full life. He has knee troubles. But his fighting spirit remains vibrant. "When I see the political victors in this country, I get a foretaste of a culture war."

His latest manuscript, a collection of handwritten pieces of paper, is on the table. The book, titled "Jewish Diary," will be published this fall. Every morning, Konrad spends four hours fine-tuning his writing, a task he approaches with strict discipline and an irrepressible zest for life.

'Are You Finished with the Jewish Mafia?'

It is difficult to meet any of the leaders of the radical right-wing party Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary. Jobbik generally views international journalists as its enemies. Zsolt Varkonyi, 54, manager of the Jobbik election campaign in April, finally agreed to speak with SPIEGEL. The meeting took place at Deryne, a restaurant in Buda catering to a hip, multi-ethnic crowd.


Zsolt Varkonyi, 54, manager of the Jobbik election campaign

As a greeting, Varkonyi says: "Well, have you already met with all of your liberal contacts? Are you finished with the Jewish mafia?"

With his hair combed back and his rimless glasses, he looks like an aging model pupil. Varkonyi, who is from an old aristocratic Hungarian family, studied film and marketing in Sweden and the United States, and he has a degree from a college in Cleveland. But his native Hungary was always in his heart. The self-proclaimed "fierce patriot" explains the Jobbik philosophy. It's a crude blend of inferiority complex and megalomania, coupled with a clear set of bogeymen, including the Jews, Gypsies, globalization, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Jobbik supporters hate anything and anyone seeking to control the country, and anything that threatens to deprive the Hungarians -- who were, in fact, late arrivals in Europe after migrating to present-day Hungary from the Ural Mountains, and who have often been sidelined by their more powerful neighbors -- of "their rightful place" among Europe's leading nations. According to this construct, Hungary is the eternal and unjustly punished loser. The Treaty of Trianon is especially symbolic of this trauma. The 1920 treaty, signed at the Trianon Palace in Versailles outside Paris, deprived Hungary, one of the losing powers in World War I, of more than two-thirds of its territory.

[pjotr]

Part 3: Rescuing Hungary from a Global Conspiracy

The Jobbik party dreams of this Greater Hungary. "More than half of our brothers live outside their fatherland, and we want to bring them back," says Varkonyi. For Varkonyi, the Orban government's proposal to offer a Hungarian passport to all ethnic Hungarians living abroad is a first step, but he doesn't understand why many see this as a provocation. A father of three, Varkonyi is worried about the low birth rate among Hungarians, saying that all of Europe is being taken over by foreigners. According to his calculations, by the year 2050 "gypsies will already make up half the population in Hungary." Jobbik, he says, is fighting for a "spiritually healthy society based on Christian values." In the terminology of the right-wing extremists, Jews are referred to as people with "foreign hearts."

The Jobbik campaign manager occasionally rages against "subjugation by international financial capital." But for the most part, he chooses his words carefully and speaks in the quiet voice of an aesthete. Is he an anti-Semite? Of course not, he says. He prefers to leave the use of coarser language to people like former police psychologist Imre Posta, who likes to appear at Jobbik party conventions, where he says things like: "The Jewish people are violently invading aggressors who threaten the existence of the original Hungarian land."


Imre Posta

Varkonyi skips dessert, and then he leaves the café as quietly as he arrived. He is a shadow warrior. He has taken a one-year hiatus from his work with the party and is writing a book. He prefers not to discuss what it's about. But it doesn't seem farfetched to expect that it could be about rescuing Hungary from a global conspiracy.

Taking Freedom for Granted

Noemi Kiss, 36, an adventurer and a revolutionary, is seen as the voice of a new literary generation. She talks about rifts in society and about male and female lovers, and she holds a mirror up to herself and her country. But, in a seeming contradiction, she voted for the conservative right-wing Fidesz party in April.


The Hungarian author Noémi Kiss

It was less a vote for Fidesz than against the Socialists, she says. A settling of accounts. "Hungary had become a country of political lies and a hotbed of a loss of trust in promises," she says. "The previous administration introduced virtually no reforms, and people were resentful. In the end, there was no other choice but to vote the Socialists out of office."

Kiss grew up in a family that valued political discussion, especially against the provincialism of the communists led by the former Hungarian leader Janos Kadar. She and her parents, like most Hungarians, perceived the collapse of the Soviet bloc as liberation. She was 15 at the time. But freedoms were eventually taken for granted and other things became more important, things like self-discovery and careers.

Rarely Looking to the Past

She did her doctorate under Paul Celan, the author of the poem "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue"), which includes the famous line "Death is a master from Germany." In her late 20s, she wrote short stories that shattered sexual taboos and became a celebrated young literary star. Today Kiss, an Audrey Hepburn type with a short haircut, is a lecturer in comparative literature and has been the mother of twins for the past nine months.



She is upset about cuts in government funding for culture, but she thinks it's too early to condemn Orban. "It's hard to believe in positive change, but I have to, or else I wouldn't have a future."

Kiss and most other young members of the Hungarian literary scene, worn out by years of social conflict, yearn for a private time-out and enjoy the time they spend not talking about political issues. The dichotomy in the cultural scene is reflected in the places where intellectuals meet and the subjects they discuss. The members of the older generation like to get together at the plush, opulent New York, a café that dates back to the late 19th century. They look to the past and are worried about a return of anti-Semitism.

Younger intellectuals like Kiss prefer the faceless, modern bars at the Chinese market. They rarely look to the past, occasionally to the future and often look sideways. Kiss's latest book is a collection of short stories titled: "What Happened While We Were Sleeping."

[pjotr]

Part 4: 'Heil Hitler, Professor Tamas'

Things won't get that bad -- at least that was what Jewish intellectual Gaspar Miklos Tamas, 61, used to think. But he changed his mind one day last year, when a group of men in black uniforms and riding boots appeared outside his house in downtown Budapest, shouting "Heil Hitler, Professor Tamas, how are you?"


Hungarian philosophy professor, Gaspar Miklos Tamas


Budapest survived fascism and communism and blossomed after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now the Hungarian capital is experiencing a rebirth in anti-Semitism. This 2007 photo shows members of the far-right group Magyar Garda (Hungarian Guard) during an induction ceremony in Heroes' Square in Budapest.

Then came the spring election, bringing with it the decline of the liberal leftist camp, for which Tamas, a philosophy professor, once held a seat in parliament. There was also Orban's two-thirds majority in parliament that suddenly makes everything possible, even a new constitution.

Tamas hasn't been invited to appear on any television programs since the election. He has heard that 16 of the 23 employees in his research institute at the Academy of Sciences are to be let go. He is one of the 16.

Surrounded by his books in his dilapidated house, he reflects on what went wrong in Budapest. He talks about the problems the right wing has used to its benefit, including high unemployment, exploitation by the post-communists, many of whom profited from the changes that followed the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and the poor job opportunities for students.

And yet, he says, even all of this cannot explain what is happening. For Tamas, the tacit agreement between Fidesz and Jobbik is "a declaration of poverty by the system" from which it may never recover. The fact that the socialists lost control of all Hungary's major towns and cities, with the exception of Szeged, in the recent municipal elections is exactly what he expected. "Well then, good night Hungary!" he says.

Awash with Culture

The evening sun bathes the city in a soft, forgiving light. On the surface, everything here is tolerant and multicultural. At the Sziget music festival, there are even Roma bands playing. And where else is Bartok more spirited, Liszt more haunting or Wagner more civilized than in the magnificent state opera?

Budapest is awash with culture -- literally. Pensioners play chess in the elegant Szechenyi thermal baths. Antique hunters bargain over art deco lamps in the stores on the Falk Miksa street. Some visitors lose themselves perusing the exhibits from the dictatorship period in the House of Terror.


Pensioners play chess in the elegant Szechenyi thermal baths

Meanwhile, the motorbike club Goi, named for the Yiddish word for non-Jews, circle the parliament building in their provocative Greater Hungary jackets. And in a studio not far away, Istvan Kovacs shoots porn films. Even when it comes to hardcore, the city likes to be the best: suspenders and combat boots, sexual war games and fascistic political pornography. It's two sides of the same coin.

Around 80,000 Hungarian Jews still live in the city of 1.7 million. The synagogue on Dohany Street is considered the largest in Europe. In some of the derelict houses in the district, young people have created so-called "ruin pubs."


The synagogue on Dohany Street

Feelings of Dislocation

The Simpla is one such backyard bar, where cheap beer is sipped while sitting on old car seats listening to the sound of Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa. The clientele is a mixture of brokers with their laptops and wannabe existential poets. Some of the drinkers here make fun of the "far-right idiots." Others explain that they now prefer to wear baseball caps over their yarmulkes and that their parents have packed their bags just in case. They feel dislocated, like foreigners in their own country.

The country's most famous writer has not lived in Hungary for years. Imre Kertesz, 80, an Auschwitz survivor and author of "Fateless," grew up in Budapest. He is tough on his compatriots. "Right-wing extremists and anti-Semites are in charge," he says. "The old burdens of Hungary, her dishonesty and her propensity to repress things, are thriving more than ever. Hungary and the war, Hungary and fascism, Hungary and socialism: Nothing has been worked through, everything is painted over with pretty colors. Budapest is a city without a memory."


Imre Kertesz

Kertesz now lives in the German capital. "Why? It's very simple. Because for a Jewish writer, life is better in Berlin than in Budapest."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

[tufta]

Pjotr, I have read the whole article. I would say it is big news if it is all as depicted by Spiegel. I am rather a close follower of Central Europen countries, but never till today I had an impression the situation in Hungary is so alarming bad as presented. In the last local elections the Hungarians confirmed their previous choice of Fidesz party as the leading power to take them out of the catastrophe, the lying socialist leader Ferenc Gyurcsany and his party has put the once flourishing Hungary into. The choice of Fidesz party not the Jobbik. It is the Jobbik not the Fidesz which is a far right and rascist. Btw. - it is clearly racist but their main target is the Roma people. Jobbik is fought against by legal ways – its preelection racist TV spots were not broadcasted because of an intervention of the court. 18 extremist members of the party were imprisoned. This are but some news I remember but didnt find them in the article you posted. Presently among 386 seats in Hungarian parliament 263 belong to Fidesz, to socialists 59, and the Jobbik – 47. The socialists still have more than the right-wingers. Is this situation so unique in Europe? Or are the non-Western far right wingers more dangerous than the Western ones. The major part of the article is devoted, or present the situation in Hungary as seen by a Hungarian Jew, a writer Gyorgy Konrad, who is 77, and who loves Budapest. And who does not exlude leaving Hungary for good, which he did exclude living in the country under the two totalitarian rules. He didn't do when German Nazi ruled the country. So the situation is now worse than under Germans? And worse than under the Soviets, also?? Now he voted for socialists! Wow. He wanted to stop one extreme with another. Pjotr, until I find some other confirmation that there is a raging antisemitism in Hungary, this article will just complement the image I am getting about it's source – Spiegel. Remember the article there about nazi helpers? It was best reviewed by Reuters title -


"Germany looks abroad for Hitler’s helpers"

[pjotr]

Tufta,

There are a few things I want to say, before we get into a colored debate or misunderstand eachother. First the conditions. I look from a colored West-European perspective, and that is why your opinion and that of Bonobo and others (Aadam and Bunjo at Jaga's Forum) is so important to me. I get the Polish and Central- European perspective I don't get in the Netherlands with my Dutch, Flemish, British, German, French/Wallonand American (CNN, Sky), Israeli (Haaretz, which English edition I read every day) and Arab (Al Jazeera, English edition) sources.

About the Germans, their attitude and the German press. I know first of all the West-Germans who form the majority. I know that after the Second World war the Entnazificierung ( pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazyfikacja ), Denazification went pretty far. Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering impotent the organizations associated with it. In education the principles of freedom and democracy were tought.


Diese Schandtaten: Eure Schuld! ("These atrocities: Your Fault!") One of the posters distributed by U.S. occupation authorities in the summer of 1945 for the purpose of instilling a sense of collective guilt.

These measures were good for the indoctrinated and drilled German masses who were brainwashed by the Hitlerjugend program, Bund Deutscher Mädel (Girls and young women organisation of the Third Reich), the NSDAP party propaganda, Goebbels propaganda machine, the anti-semitic and racist education system of the third reich, and the collective guilt of millions of Germans who participated in a devastating and destructive war of conquest, annihilation of whole peoples and the robery, abuse and attempt to erase entire nations, cultures and peoples. But the side effect was that camouflaged and not mentioned was the fact that the whole of the West-German society and the elite of it was infiltrated or filled with former Nazi-party nomenklatura, SS-soldiers and officers, Gestapo and SD people, former concentration camp guards and doctors, Einsatzcommando's (the destruction units who killed Jews and Poles and others) and also war criminals from within the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe (Nazi Airforce) and Kriegsmarine (Hitlers Navy). In the post-war Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) a lot of people in the political, economical, financial and medical elite were former Nazi's (SS, Gestapo, SD/Sipo, Wehrmacht war criminals) who were head of local police forces, doctors, teachers, shop owners, lawjers, judges, Civil law notaries, bankers, politicians of right and leftwing parties and etc. There were simply to many of them, and the new democratic and capitalist West-Germany was built with their participation and they benefitted of it. Also former foreign henchmen of the German Nazi's benefited from the German Wirtschaftswunder, the Dutch, Flemish, Baltic, French, Wallon, Danish, Hungarian and Russian "Nazi's" who commited war crimes in Poland, their own countries, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states and Russia. In the DDR, Hungary, Slowakia and Rumania there were no Entnazificierung programs, because the fascist crimes in these so called "anti-fascist" peoples republics were commited by the Western fascists. The Nazi crimes were the guilt of the West, of West-Germany, the Americans and the Brits. The DDR, Slowakia, Hungary and the other Nazi collaborators of Central- and Eastern Europe did not exist. They were the victim in the Communist propaganda.
In my view Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slowakia, Rumania, Croatia and Italy share a brown and black past (the colors of the SA and SS).

I know from my mother that Poland and Hungary have historical good ties, and that both nations have experiance with occupation and opression by Austrians, Russians and Germans. But the differance was that Hungary was an active allie of Germany and played a very bad role in the second world war and that Poland was the one of the largest victims of the Nazi barbary. I can't forget the Hungarian role in the second world war. The Hungarian position in the Austrian-Hungarian Habsburg double monarchy was ofcourse also differant than that of the Polish, Czech and Slowakian parts of the Habsburg empire.

I know that Germans look very critical towards their own recent past, and in the same time look critical towards the former collaborating regimes with Nazi Germany. The Der Spiegel article is interesting when I read it with the knowledge that it is a text of a leading German magazine, the quality and luck that I can read it with the comment and criticizm of a Central-European critic (You, the Pole Tufta), and that in the same time I become aware of my own "colored" West-European view, which is colored by my fathers view (who disliked Germans, Austrians, Hungarians, Slowaks, Croats, Japanese and Irish people for some reason? They were marked as brown, reactionairy, fascist, heavy wrong kind of Nationalist -bloodthirsty Blood and Honour/Blut und Bodem- kind of people). This view you get of these people as a child, teenager and young adult. Labeling, puting people in a corner (these are the right ones and these are the wrong ones, no shades of grey, inbetween black and white and not putting things into perspective). I went to Budapest in 1995, and my view changed, I loved the atmosphere of the city, it's mixture of Eastern and Western elements (sometimes nearly Turkish oriental), and didn't felt the burden of the past. I have to say that I felt the burden of the past in Poland, probably because of my vulnerability due to the fact of Polish blood and family history and memories that went on in my head and merged with the live scenes in Poland, Communist Poland, when I was there. I visited Auschwitz in 2004 for the first time, but I felt the heavy history before in the seventees and eightees as a child. You saw and see the marks of the war everywhere in Poland and in the rest of Europe. The ugly villages, towns and cities of concrete and metal, the ugly post-war stile neighbourhoods and city centres in many German and Flemish cities and some Dutch towns is due to the devastating effects of the first and second world wars. These wars changed the esthetics of these places for good. Complete old pitoresque, cosy, warm and beautiful villages and towns became ugly anonymous modern settlements without a soul. The soul was bombed, shelled, burned, massacred, run over, deleted by these wars. And ofcourse the same happended on a much larger scale in Poland, Ukraine and Russia in the second world, with its dozens of millions of dead, mutulated and marked people.

The article of der Spiegel is probably to much seen from a Hungarian Jewish view and German political correct view. A German view colored by the guilt feeling the German intelligentsia and press always have. Maybe you are right that they try to find people to share their guilt with. And they are partly true that the Hungarian fascist henchmen of the German Nazi's were very near to the German SS and police einsatz commando's who executed, tortured and vandalized the lives and homes of Jewish and Polish people in Poland. They actively helped the Germans to round up and destroy the Hungarian jews in Hungary and Poland (the transportation of Hungarian jews to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in Poland like Treblinka and Sobibor).

I stand more distant towards the Hungarians and don't feel a historical connection with that country, which is very far from me and my country. So maybe that's why that I am not emotional, pro or affectionate of Hungary. Many 'full' Poles living in Central-European Poland, who share a communist opression and the solidarity between the Hungarians and Poles in 1956 and the longer past of the Poles who stopped the Ottoman Turks to occupy Hungary and Austria in the past.

Pieter

[tufta]

Pjotr, it is not strange if we differ in our views here and there. On the opposite - it makes discussion more lively. If you don't agree with me - just say it, give me a trigger to change my mind if you think I am wrong somewhere
Denazification is a fact and it would be interesting to discuss how it worked - but in the problem of Hungary it is of marginal importance. Germany has built a liberal democracy closest to an ideal, but still not ideal. All that is marginal in a discussion opened by the un-ideal (in my opinion) article of Spiegel. Which I am glad you have posted as otheriwise I wouldn;t have most probably read it. But I think it would be a good think to leave Germany aside for a while and discuss Hungary - is it Europe's capital of anti-Semitism or not?

[pjotr]

Tufta,

I don't think that Hungary is Europe's capital of anti-semitism, because anti-semitism, racism, discrimination and xenophobia is everywhere. In Hungary, yes, but also in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Hungaries neighbour Austria (a brown country in my view, because the denazification was not succesful. Nazi cells or Nazi like rightwing groups florished after the war under the name of rightwing liberal or conservative Austrian organisations and parties. And there even were former Austrian nazi's in the Austrian Labour party.), and many more European nations.

I think the most thrightening xenophobia, racism or isolationalism and conflicts between ethnic groups exist in Russia today, and in large cities in the larger West-European countries. Budapest and Hungary has a problem with xenophobia, racism and anti-semitism. But is that differan than the situation in Greece, Rumania, Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, the no-go area's in large West-European cities controled by ethnic gangs of Muslim migrants. Migrants are discriminated by the white low classes of frustrated and irritated unemployed native Europeans (the Native underclass), the not that subtile working class and some nouveau riche middle class people who simply see the foreign migrants as competitors, and would be happy if they themselves or Populist governments they choose would get rid of these foreign elements. In the same time in ethnic zones of migrants groups of migrants of one ethnic group act sometimes the same as the natives I just mentioned. They can be intolerant and discriminating towards native Europeans and other foreign migrants who do not belong to their dominant group.

Germany has a problem with intolerant xenophobe Germans and radical or extremist foreign migrant elements. Hungary has a problem with a far right element in and outside it's Budapest parliament. These uniformed, fascist party militia like Hungarian Guards are a worrysome phenomenon. In a civilized democracy the centre-right and centre-left always form a counterveiling power against the threat of far right, extreme left or intolerant Fundamentalist religious (theocratic) tendensies. Sometimes fierce democratic oponents can joyn forces of extreme forces of darkness threaten the stability of a country or society. In Turkey and Algeria the army put aside fundamentalist Islamist governments for instance.

Pieter

[pjotr]

Another thing countries as Hungary, the Netherlands and Denmark with influential far right and Populist parties are part of the European Union. The EU will not tolerate human rights abuses, ethnic discrimination, progroms, a European government with a racist agenda or human right violations. As long as there are no race riots, civil wars or progroms on Gypsies, fellow Europeans, Muslims, Jews or Poles, I am not that worried. But I am concerned about Jobbik, the PVV and the other West-European rightwing Populist parties. Will they grow or is it just a trend and a sign of the population against the traditional political parties; "Listen to our concerns or we will leave you". "We will vote for someone else you don't like". It is a provocative and political incorrect stance of voters, voters who are often not even racist, xenophobe or Nationalist themselves, they are just against the political elite of their country and concerned about uncontrolled mass immigration of non-Western, Non-European people!

[tufta]

Pjotr, thank you for your honest and open answer. It was extremely interesting to read it. Well, we basically agree I must say. The slightly differing views between Central and Western Europe dweller are something normal and in fact enriching. My point was however not to belittle the dangers of far right wing in Central Europe, in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia. Central Europe just too much resembles a great pot of goulash , or bigos if you prefer, we are all mixed here - culturally and genetically, to produce or sustain a really toxic ideology or practice. We ARE the peaceful loving kind of poeple. Poland, Hungary in their most blood thirsty periods of history were only 'a bit' blood thirsty - in compariosn that is to our neighbours. Hungarian fascist during WWII wouldn't survive a month without German backing. Polish communists wouldn't survive half a year without Russian backing. We have our sins. Of neglect, of anarchy, of overgrown short sighted individualism. Of injustice. But murderous ideologies are not our speciality. Not becasue we are such angels, but simply because we are overly free inside, individualistic to sustain any ideology which requires discipline. The far right ideology to become effective requires discipline....
The present rise of right wing ideology, as demonstrated by Jobbik, is not the invention of Jobbik. It is secondary to political currents born elsewhere. The genie was let out of the bottle again somewhere else. ..

Please do read this link

www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/apr2010/gb20100420_420459.htm

What's Behind Hungary's Far-Right Jobbik
Hungary's right-wing Jobbik party has burst into the news after its strong showing in the recent election. But its roots run deep—and aren't limited to Central Europe


and this one

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_right_in_Germany

There was not a slight mention of this background in Spiegels article. All of a sudden we are all to unconsciously correlate "raging antisemitism" with Budapest AD 2010, not with Berlin 1942...

I disagree.

[tufta]

Oct 15, 2010 16:48:59 GMT 1 pjotr said:

The DDR, Slowakia, Hungary and the other Nazi collaborators of Central- and Eastern Europe did not exist.

Pjotr, too often appears a mistake which is constructed this way: the Germans, Germany is free from nazism, fascism, because there was a denazification programme and lessons of democracy from the Americans. It is elsewhere where suspiscion should be focused - in the former allies of Germany - Hungary, Slovakia, Romania - they had no denazification programme! Where is the mistake? Hungary, SLovakia, Romonia did have a denazification programme performed by the Soviets. It was much more radical than the one performed by the Americans - all (well, alomost) suspects of collaboration with the nazis were simply killed.

[pjotr]

Oct 15, 2010 20:24:34 GMT 1 tufta said:

Oct 15, 2010 16:48:59 GMT 1 pjotr said:

The DDR, Slowakia, Hungary and the other Nazi collaborators of Central- and Eastern Europe did not exist.

Hungary, SLovakia, Romonia did have a denazification programme performed by the Soviets. It was much more radical than the one performed by the Americans - all (well, alomost) suspects of collaboration with the nazis were simply killed.

Tufta,

A lot of people in the West regret that the West did not have the same approach. I remember my father saying in my childhood, they did not kill enough SS men and Nazi's. It was an eye on eye, tooth on tooth, old testamonial desire of my fathers generation who had experianced the humiliation of the occupation and heald a deep grudge against their former occupiers and hated Quisling compatriots (the despised members of the NSB, direct collaborators with the German Nazi's and the Dutch SS). I remember my father (a man who disliked communism and socialism, especially Sovjets) saying the Russians did it better. They got rid of those bastards. There were to many Nazi war criminals left alive in his view. Germany and Austria were filled with former Nazi's. Due to the fact that like Hitler a lot of the Nazi top offiicials and SS people were Austrians, Austria was and is a 'brown' country in a lot of Dutch peoples eyes. The top of the Nazi hierarchy in the Netherlands was Austrian (actualy a mix of Austrians and Germans). My father never did trust Germans of his generation or Germans who were older than him. They were an infected generation, infected with guilt and blood on their hands. A short time ago my father said, thank god the bad generation is fading away. Good Germans (the new generation) stay, but always be careful with these Germans. It is in my genes Tufta, from my mothers Polish side and my fathers Dutch side. I like the present Germany, but always monitor Germans carefully and examine the politics and peoples actions in this large Eastern neighbour. Today the situation is okay, but how will the situation be tomorrow? In my opinion the rest of Europe may never be lasy on Germany, keeping Germany on the right track, and minimalizing the German influence to the rightfull place it has. Mind you, nearly 1/3 of the Europeans is German speaking (Germany, Austria and the German speaking part of Switzerland). And there is some German alliance there, many people don't see. The Linguistic and cultural alliance in Central-Europe.

Pieter

[tufta]

Oct 16, 2010 12:31:45 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Today the situation is okay, but how will the situation be tomorrow? In my opinion the rest of Europe may never be lasy on Germany, keeping Germany on the right track, and minimalizing the German influence to the rightfull place it has. Mind you, nearly 1/3 of the Europeans is German speaking (Germany, Austria and the German speaking part of Switzerland). And there is some German alliance there, many people don't see. The Linguistic and cultural alliance in Central-Europe.

Pieter

1/3 not 1/5? If there are around 100 million Europeans speaking German and the EU is 500 millions people that makes 1/5, or am I wrong?
But it is not that important. What I find important is what dangers do you see if Germany is not 'kept on the right track' from you Western European perspective?

[pjotr]

Oct 16, 2010 17:03:26 GMT 1 tufta said:

Oct 16, 2010 12:31:45 GMT 1 pjotr said:

Today the situation is okay, but how will the situation be tomorrow? In my opinion the rest of Europe may never be lasy on Germany, keeping Germany on the right track, and minimalizing the German influence to the rightfull place it has. Mind you, nearly 1/3 of the Europeans is German speaking (Germany, Austria and the German speaking part of Switzerland). And there is some German alliance there, many people don't see. The Linguistic and cultural alliance in Central-Europe.

Pieter

1/3 not 1/5? If there are around 100 million Europeans speaking German and the EU is 500 millions people that makes 1/5, or am I wrong?
But it is not that important. What I find important is what dangers do you see if Germany is not 'kept on the right track' from you Western European perspective?

Tufta,

I have to correct you here a little bit. In the years that I visited and participated in the English language Polish Forums, Aadam, Bunjo (Wojtek), you, Bonobo and other Poles have changed my view on Europe, Poland and Central-Europe. I read books of Polish Catholics and Polish jews, and met people in Krakow and Warsaw. So My Dutch Western-European views merged with the views of Central Europeans and people like Norman Davies whom book 2004: Rising '44. The Battle for Warsaw. (Londen: Pan Books. ISBN 0-333-90568-7) I bought Davies book in the Warsaw Uprising Museum in Warsaw. And read it in the Netherlands.

I am not worried about Germany today, but like Poles, Czechs, French, Danes and Belgians watch what is happening on the territory of that large neighbour. The country is okay, but there are extreme left, far right and Islamist forces there in the German society which are dangerous. We have these forces also in the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, the smaller countries. In our societies it is easier to oversee the dangers and control it. In the larger German territories it is more difficult to control extremist and radical movements, developments and dangers. Germany is a good country, a good neighbour of the Netherlands and Poland. But we must never forget the past, the cultural, economical, sociological and ethnic territorial conditions of the region of Europe we are in.

How are the German-Russian, German-French and American-German relationships, and are they beneficial or bad for our countries. I am sceptical towards the German-Russian alliance for instance and worried about a to strong German-French power alliance within the European Union. OK, the Germans are 1/5 th of the European population. My mistake, I did not know that the European Union has 500 milion people. To finish this story. In the case of a long term economical crisis, Germany with a lot of unemployment and ethnic tensions is a political problem for the EU. Unrest in Germany can easily cross borders and become a problem in the Western-European neighbouring countries, because they have the same ethnic built up of their societies and the same problems.

Pieter

[tufta]

Ok, I have got it, Pjotr, you are not a good example of a Western-European regarding the matters concerning equilibrium in Europe! ;D ;D ;D You have breathed with the other lung orf Europe too much for that. But that is very good!

[tufta]

Oct 17, 2010 0:06:27 GMT 1 pjotr said:

the Germans are 1/5 th of the European population.
Pieter

Pieter, maybe we could try to look at it from the other way? Look how Poles see it - German speakers are around 100-110 million, Polish speakers worldwide are arrond 50 million. This is not a vast difference. We don't see Germany as an entity so great it can't be equalled economically, culturally or in any other way. They land area is similar to ours. etc etc. I know that you probably look at it from a perspective of a Dutch speaker, which may be different. Just as in the eyes of Americans the perspective is different - usually in their perspective Germany is 'overgrown'. But not in Poland -we see them quite normally. And we like them each year more

[pjotr]

Oct 17, 2010 7:15:39 GMT 1 tufta said:

Oct 17, 2010 0:06:27 GMT 1 pjotr said:

the Germans are 1/5 th of the European population.
Pieter

Pieter, maybe we could try to look at it from the other way? Look how Poles see it - German speakers are around 100-110 million, Polish speakers worldwide are arrond 50 million. This is not a vast difference. We don't see Germany as an entity so great it can't be equalled economically, culturally or in any other way. They land area is similar to ours. etc etc. I know that you probably look at it from a perspective of a Dutch speaker, which may be different. Just as in the eyes of Americans the perspective is different - usually in their perspective Germany is 'overgrown'. But not in Poland -we see them quite normally. And we like them each year more

That's good Tufta, that is very good. I think it has to do with the very strong German democratic Federalism (Bundesrepublicanismus), which is a sort of Constitutionalism, pride of it's democratic nature and roots in a new United Europe. Words, written words are sometimes very difficult Tufta, because you don't have the words and fastness, subtility and putting things into perspective of a human conversation between two people on the same space, time and setting. I try to be very precise, accurate and honest in my writing. And I hope that you believe me. (Ofcourse the same counts for Bonobo and other participants and readers) But I hope you also see that English is not my native language. Like Germany too is not my native language. I probably built sentances in English in the Dutch way of making sentences? It's hard to see ones own mistakes or 'national' colored or flavor of English. About the Netherlands, Germany and Poland it is difficult to be very exact, because the internal situations can be very complex and not just black and white, rightwing or leftwing. There are many differant shades and colors. In Germany like in the Netherlands you can nearly speak about three political main streams. First the Left, second the Centre and third the right. The left can be traditional Marxist or Left-Social-democratic or progressive in the Western sense (democrats in the US and liberal in the Anglo-saxon sense). Next to that traditional radical left and left; Marxist-Leninists (Bolsjewists), (Anti-Stalnisist) Trotskists (especially in France and Great Britain) and Maoists you have new kinds of Leftisms, such as radical liberalism or radical democratic environmentalists and peace activists ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreenLeft / en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_%2790/The_Greens / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwi%C4%85zek_90/Zieloni ) and the typical West-European Anarchist movement of the squaters movement, the German and Dutch Autonomen (which has branches or links in Denmark, Great-Britain and Poland) ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomism ), which in the Dutch perspective is considered the third left. Next to the centre-left and left we have the far left Anarchist left. Squating is prohibited since october 1 2010, and that leads to tensions, and could probably lead to radicalisation of the allready Dutch and foreign (Italian, Spanish and yes Polish Anarchist) squaters in the larger Dutch cities. Look at this youtube, after a demonstration against the introduction of the law which prohibits squating:





In the Centre of the Netherlands political spectrum you have the moderate centre-left and centre-right parties who often formed the Dutch coalition goverments, which actually often were centrist governments with centre-right and centre-left parties. The Christian-democrats and Labour often cooperated, but also the centre-right to rightwing VVD collaborated with Labour several times. Today that is nearly impossible in the polarised climate of the last years in which the VVD moved towards like the right wing of the Polish PO government party. The smaller D66, social-liberal (left-liberal sister of the rightwing liberal VVD) party often was the Cement of many centre-left and centre-right coalitions. Like in Germany the centre left Labour (the social-democratic) PvdA and the Christian-democratic CDA were always the largest parties, the last 30 years. Today the political spectrum moved to the right, because the conservative-liberal VVD for the first time became the largest party, the CDA lost votes and the Rightwing Populist PVV of Wilders got a major victory. Creating a very small rightwing majority for the first time in many decades. The Netherlands were for a very long time governed by moderate centrist governments. Today we moved from the centre to the right! That is a new phenomenon form the Netherlands. In Polish perspective this would mean that for instance the PO and PiS cooperated with LPR/Samoobrona in which the latter has more votes and seats in parlaiment than PiS. Because actually the PVV is a sort of combination of the rightwing populist LPR and the leftwing populist Samoobrona. The differance is that the PVV is larger than LPR/Samoobrona have ever been and is more influential, because it controls the government. In the Polish former PiS, LPR and Samoobrona government PiS was dominant. In the present VVD-CDA government, which is endorsed by the PVV, the PVV is the dominant factor, because it has the key and because it has allies in the rightwing VVD and the rightwing of the CDA.

Finally you have the rightwing of the Dutch politics with in the far right corner the fundamentalist Protestant SGP party ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Political_Party / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polityczna_Partia_Protestant%C3%B3w ), which is a very small and firmly Pro-Israel, biblical (theocratic), pro-death penalty and an important supporter of both the PVV and the present government coalition of VVD-CDA. If the SGP and CDA dissidents would redraw their support for the present Rutte Cabinet, the present coalition government could fall. So the SGP is important for the VVD, CDA and PVV. The SGP supports the PVV endorsed government due to PVV's Pro-Israel stance, and the mantra of the PVV, the Dutch civilization is a Judeo-christian one with humanism as the thrid secular branche. Islam is left out of it and seen as alien to the Dutch culture and history. The PVV is secular, rightwing, conservative and Nationalistic. But it sees the Netherlands and Europe as a Christian country and continent with jewish the roots of the old testament. In the European history of anti-semitic secular and religious far right, the PVV is a strange kind of far right movement, because it is philosemitic and Zionist. Members of the PVV wear Israeli army t-shirts and bomber jacks. The contradictio in terminis is that the PVV is supported by far right Hooligans, skin heads, and rightwing militants who have a history of anti-semitism, racism and violence against foreigners and jewish objects. Geert Wilders don't likes that fact, because on several ocasions he spoke against neo-nazism, and removed rightwing extremist elements from his rightwing populist movement. But if you hear him and his party members and parlaimentarians speak about Muslims or Islam, it's islamophobia looks like the old anti-semitism of Nazi's and Stalinist Poles - the anti-semitic communism of Stalin and his Polish henchmen - even though a lot of Polish Stalinists were Polish jews - Sometimes I think these Jewish stalinists must have been jews with selfhatred, the Germans have a word for it Jüdischer selbshaß, the Americans and Israeli's call them self hating jews. Why do I say this? Remember that the Polish Pre-war communist party with leaders and members of Polish-Jewish and Polish-Catholic heritage were wiped out by Stalin and Beria, look at the Doctors' plot ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_plot / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spisek_lekarzy_kremlowskich ).

Back to the Netherlands. Outside the parlaimentarian politics you have the influence of the civil society, and the strong organises employers and Unions. The power of local and regional political movements and parties has grown. Some villages, towns and cities are governed or dominated by local/regional parties, who are only interested in the local circumstances, economy, education and finances.
In Arnhen for instance you have a Arnhem political party called Pro Arnhem ( www.proarnhem.nl/ : the logo says 'If you love the city') and my parents town Vlissingen is governed by the locals ( Local Party of Vlissingen: www.lokalepartijvlissingen.nl/ ). My parents voted for this party in the local elections because they were fed up with the National parties in Vlissingen, who did not do what they promised. The locals are pragmatic, moderate, civilian parties.

Pieter

[pjotr]

Migrants in the Dutch political system

The majority of the migrants are integrated in the Netherlands system with affirmative action programs in the past, called positive discrimination in Dutch. Today most of them visit Dutch primary schools, high schools, institutions of higher education and even the university (a minority of them, but stil they are there). Most political parties, except the PVV, SGP and small rightwing Populist competitor of the PVV 'Proud of the Netherlands', have migrants members, activists and politicians on local, provincial and national level. Wit the last elections their number has dropped and in the present government there are no migrant ministers or state secretaries. Due to the polarisation in our society and anti-immigrant and anti-muslim sentiments the tolerance towards Muslims and non-muslim, non-western migrants has decreased. So both Muslim and christian migrants have a tougher time today in the Netherlands, with it's isolationalist, self centered and 'National' cultural climate. In the same time half of the Dutch people, rulers and officials are stil as tolerant as they always were. That is the complicated and hard to explain aspect of the Netherlands today. The Dutch liberalism and tolerance did not fade away, but a National conservative layers is placed over it. The political dominance of the centre moved towards the right!

Ethnic migrant organisation, pluriformity within the migrant communities

In the Netherlands the migrants, both Muslims and non-muslims are very organised. They have their national workers movements and organisations. You have Marxist, socialist and leftwing patriotic movements, Muslim organisations (Mosque federations, foundations and organisations, some connected to the Turkish or Maroccan state, some moderate conservative, some fundamentalist or puritinical), and you have militant, rightwing Nationalist, monarchist, seperatist or even far right movements or parties of migrants. For instance the far right fascist Turkish Grey Wolves, the Kurd far left and Nationalist PKK, the Iranian Mujahideen khalq, Christian Moluccan Nationalists of the RMS (movement for the republic of Free South Moluccan. Which does not exist, because the Moluccan Islands are part of Indonesia. RMS people are anti-Indonesian), Shia organisations of Lebanese, Iraqi and Iranian shi'ites. Ofcourse like in the rest of the world the Sunni Muslims (most Turks and Maroccans are Sunni) are the majority in the Netherlands too.

Links:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_wolves / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szare_Wilki
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party / pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partia_Pracuj%C4%85cych_Kurdystanu
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Mujahedin_of_Iran /


Logo of the People's Mujahedin of Iran

[tufta]

But I do understand you perfectly, Pieter! I don't read your words literally, but in a whole context of your views which I know already. When you write 'we have to watch Germany' I don't read it - aha, a Germanophob is speaking. I do know what you mean.I know that you are everything but a Germanophob.

[tufta]

>>Der Spiegel gets it wrong

Oct 22nd 2010, 12:48 by A.L.B. | BUDAPEST

IS BUDAPEST "Europe’s capital of anti-Semitism"? Der Spiegel appears to think so. That is the headline for a lengthy article by Eric Follath, which reports that the Hungarian capital is “experiencing a rebirth of anti-Semitism” and that Jews are “being openly intimidated”. The article has triggered an angry reaction here. Writing in HVG, a liberal weekly, János Pelle described the article as “hateful”.

Anti-Semitism remains the most sensitive issue in Hungarian public life. Certainly, there are worrying political trends. The far-right Jobbik party won 16.7 per cent of the votes in April’s election, campaigning against what it called "Gypsy crime" and Israeli investors it said were "colonising" the country (unlike, it seems, their Austrian or German counterparts). Jobbik denies it is anti-Semitic, although the party is certainly no friend of Hungary’s Jews. For his Spiegel piece, Mr Follath interviewed György Konrád, a Holocaust survivor and one of Hungary’s greatest writers, and Gáspár Miklós Tamás, a philosopher. Both told alarming stories about groups of men in black uniforms and boots, marching in formation and shouting threats; these were presumably members of Jobbik’s uniformed wing, the now-banned Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard).

Follath also quotes from a Die Welt interview with the Hungarian Nobel literature laureate Imre Kertész, published last year. Mr Kertesz, who lives in Berlin, says, of Hungary's past, “Nothing has been worked through, everything is painted over with pretty colours. Budapest is a city without a memory.” Mr Kertész survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald. But that does not mean he is always right. There is no shortage of memories in Budapest. The city is home to one of the world’s best Holocaust museums, which opened in 2004, the only one of its kind in post-communist eastern Europe. Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated in Parliament each year.

Politicians from right, left and centre (although not Jobbik) join thousands of others along the banks of the Danube on the annual "March of the Living", which remembers Holocaust victims. Small metal plaques mark the entrances of buildings throughout Budapest from where Jews were deported, detailing victims’ names, ages and fates. Films by a new generation of young Jewish directors exploring the Holocaust and its legacy are shown on state television. Only last week, as I reported, the British embassy unveiled a plaque commemorating Raoul Wallenberg, the heroic Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in wartime Budapest.

Mr Follath also seeks to elide the difference between the governing centre-right party, Fidesz, and Jobbik, portraying them as two parts of a right-wing populist-nationalist continuum. It is true that Fidesz did court far-right voters, for a while. But times change, even in Budapest. Pál Schmitt, Hungary’s president, recently told the UN General Assembly that the government plans to open a institute to promote tolerance, to be named after Tom Lantos, a late US congressman who was saved by Mr Wallenberg. Zsolt Semjén, a deputy prime minister, recently represented the government at the re-dedication of the Obuda synagogue in Budapest.

The problem with one-sided screeds like Mr Follath’s is that they portray Jewish life here solely through the warped prism of anti-Semitism, rather than its much more complex, and healthy, reality. (France has a much better claim to be the epicentre of European anti-Semitism.) There are a dozen functioning synagogues in Budapest, an annual Jewish summer festival heavily promoted across the city and numerous cultural organisations. While Mr Follath found time during his reporting to meet Zsolt Várkonyi, a Jobbik spokesman, he does not appear to have met any Hungarian rabbis or representatives from Mazsihisz, the official Hungarian Jewish community organisation. Instead, there are some vague claims apparently gathered in a bar about elderly Jews keeping their bags packed, "just in case". <<

[pjotr]

Oct 23, 2010 17:24:16 GMT 1 tufta said:

>>Der Spiegel gets it wrong

Oct 22nd 2010, 12:48 by A.L.B. | BUDAPEST

IS BUDAPEST "Europe’s capital of anti-Semitism"? Der Spiegel appears to think so. That is the headline for a lengthy article by Eric Follath, which reports that the Hungarian capital is “experiencing a rebirth of anti-Semitism” and that Jews are “being openly intimidated”. The article has triggered an angry reaction here. Writing in HVG, a liberal weekly, János Pelle described the article as “hateful”.

Anti-Semitism remains the most sensitive issue in Hungarian public life. Certainly, there are worrying political trends. The far-right Jobbik party won 16.7 per cent of the votes in April’s election, campaigning against what it called "Gypsy crime" and Israeli investors it said were "colonising" the country (unlike, it seems, their Austrian or German counterparts). Jobbik denies it is anti-Semitic, although the party is certainly no friend of Hungary’s Jews. For his Spiegel piece, Mr Follath interviewed György Konrád, a Holocaust survivor and one of Hungary’s greatest writers, and Gáspár Miklós Tamás, a philosopher. Both told alarming stories about groups of men in black uniforms and boots, marching in formation and shouting threats; these were presumably members of Jobbik’s uniformed wing, the now-banned Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard).

Follath also quotes from a Die Welt interview with the Hungarian Nobel literature laureate Imre Kertész, published last year. Mr Kertesz, who lives in Berlin, says, of Hungary's past, “Nothing has been worked through, everything is painted over with pretty colours. Budapest is a city without a memory.” Mr Kertész survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald. But that does not mean he is always right. There is no shortage of memories in Budapest. The city is home to one of the world’s best Holocaust museums, which opened in 2004, the only one of its kind in post-communist eastern Europe. Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated in Parliament each year.

Politicians from right, left and centre (although not Jobbik) join thousands of others along the banks of the Danube on the annual "March of the Living", which remembers Holocaust victims. Small metal plaques mark the entrances of buildings throughout Budapest from where Jews were deported, detailing victims’ names, ages and fates. Films by a new generation of young Jewish directors exploring the Holocaust and its legacy are shown on state television. Only last week, as I reported, the British embassy unveiled a plaque commemorating Raoul Wallenberg, the heroic Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in wartime Budapest.

Mr Follath also seeks to elide the difference between the governing centre-right party, Fidesz, and Jobbik, portraying them as two parts of a right-wing populist-nationalist continuum. It is true that Fidesz did court far-right voters, for a while. But times change, even in Budapest. Pál Schmitt, Hungary’s president, recently told the UN General Assembly that the government plans to open a institute to promote tolerance, to be named after Tom Lantos, a late US congressman who was saved by Mr Wallenberg. Zsolt Semjén, a deputy prime minister, recently represented the government at the re-dedication of the Obuda synagogue in Budapest.

The problem with one-sided screeds like Mr Follath’s is that they portray Jewish life here solely through the warped prism of anti-Semitism, rather than its much more complex, and healthy, reality. (France has a much better claim to be the epicentre of European anti-Semitism.) There are a dozen functioning synagogues in Budapest, an annual Jewish summer festival heavily promoted across the city and numerous cultural organisations. While Mr Follath found time during his reporting to meet Zsolt Várkonyi, a Jobbik spokesman, he does not appear to have met any Hungarian rabbis or representatives from Mazsihisz, the official Hungarian Jewish community organisation. Instead, there are some vague claims apparently gathered in a bar about elderly Jews keeping their bags packed, "just in case". <<

Tufta,

Interesting, this is a good criticizm and in the same time a countervailing power of the der Spiegel article of mister Erich Follath. Tufta, while I do believe that Hungary has a tradition of anti-semitism, like all European nations have from a heritage of the antithesis Christianity-Judaism, competing religions, cultures and peoples.

Let's take another perspective. There was anti-semitism in the Netherlands and there is anti-semitism in the Netherlands. But in Pre-war and Post-war persoctive the Dutch anti-semitism was part of one of the three fobia's, anti-catholicism by the protestant Dutch reformed Calvinists, as a reaction to that the anti-Protestantism (Protestantism was Heresy in Catholic eyes since the reformation, Protestant were heretics or headens), and the anti-semitism of both Roman-Catholics and Protestant Calvinists and Lutheranians. Like in Poland most anti-semitism wasn't mudererous before the second world war and after the war.
I know from my Protestant fathers family which was moderate and liberal, that before the war a father told his son that he would not like it if his son married a Catholic and Jewish girl. The preference was the secular-liberal wing or Protestant pillar. The Catholics and jews were simply the others in a pilarised society. Tufta, you explained me the reality of Polish anti-semitism in pre-war Poland. Was it not the same, with the differance that the two main groups in Poland were the Roman-Catholic majority and the large jewish minority. The Dutch writer Milo Anstadt (of Polish Jewish descent) told me that the Polish jews in pre-war Poland were not a group of poor defenseless discriminated people. He told me, the Polish jews were no angels and the Poles neither. You had powerful groups, selfdefence, political parties and coalitions of Jewish and Polish people. Hungary was differant, but also the home of a large Jewish community. Hungary was an allie of Germany, part of the Axis powers, and Poland an oponent. Maybe due to the Habsburg past of Hungary and the long coexistance and cooperationwith Austria. I don't know.
What I know is that I like Budapest very much and that I visited the city in 1995 with one of the Central-European art and culture journeys of my art academy.

Budapest has a wonderful atmosphere, and is a city of culture which breathes the past. A city of Hungarians, gypsies, jews, Slowaks and foreign residents (writers, artists and musicians) in the heart of Europe!

Pieter

[tufta]

Oct 23, 2010 19:51:05 GMT 1 pjotr said:

this is a good criticizm and in the same time a countervailing power of the der Spiegel article of mister Erich Follath.

To cite the author of this criticism the power of Spiegel article was in being a one-sided tyrade. One-sided screeds are not honest journalism. I have to note that to my taste one-sidedness is too often present in Spiegel's publications.

while I do believe that Hungary has a tradition of anti-semitism, like all European nations have from a heritage of the antithesis Christianity-Judaism, competing religions, cultures and peoples.

You are right of course. But because of this truth which you recall, there is a very high risk of relativisation of the most aggressive, murderous forms of antisemitism in history. Risk of dissolving them in the whole tradition of antisemitism in Christianity as an antithesis to Judaic tradition. I think the uniqness of the most murderous forms of antisemitism should not be dissolved this way. Humgarians never planned, organized and performed the elimination of the whole nation. Yes, they helped the Germans, helped in the most opportunist way not the in the causative way. And most of all - only a small part of Hungarian population who really supported Nazi Gerrmany, while in latter the support was wide and longstanding.

[pjotr]

Oct 24, 2010 12:00:35 GMT 1 tufta said:

Oct 23, 2010 19:51:05 GMT 1 pjotr said:

this is a good criticizm and in the same time a countervailing power of the der Spiegel article of mister Erich Follath.

To cite the author of this criticism the power of Spiegel article was in being a one-sided tyrade. One-sided screeds are not honest journalism. I have to note that to my taste one-sidedness is too often present in Spiegel's publications.

Tufta,

Der Spiegel is not my favorite German newspaper, it is to popular in its reporting sometimes. I prefer the conservative Frankfurther Allgemeine Zeitung, the liberal die Zeit or die Welt, serious quality newspapers, fair and honest, critical on German issues and with good essays and articles about Poland and Central- and Eastern Europe in general.
In Western-Europe it is important to read differant newspapers and magazines. In the Dutch perspective I read leftwing, centrist and rightwing written press articles and essays to get the right image about what is going on in my country.

The German Der Spiegel newspaper ofcourse is better than the English section, which has just limited space.

Pieter

[pjotr]

Oct 24, 2010 12:00:35 GMT 1 tufta said:

Oct 23, 2010 19:51:05 GMT 1 pjotr said:

this is a good criticizm and in the same time a countervailing power of the der Spiegel article of mister Erich Follath.

To cite the author of this criticism the power of Spiegel article was in being a one-sided tyrade. One-sided screeds are not honest journalism. I have to note that to my taste one-sidedness is too often present in Spiegel's publications.

while I do believe that Hungary has a tradition of anti-semitism, like all European nations have from a heritage of the antithesis Christianity-Judaism, competing religions, cultures and peoples.

You are right of course. But because of this truth which you recall, there is a very high risk of relativisation of the most aggressive, murderous forms of antisemitism in history. Risk of dissolving them in the whole tradition of antisemitism in Christianity as an antithesis to Judaic tradition. I think the uniqness of the most murderous forms of antisemitism should not be dissolved this way.

Tufta,

You are right of course here too. We should never forget the progroms of the past and the Holocuast (Shoa). We should remember christian anti-semitism of the Inquisition, the Russian and Ukrainian slaughert of jews, the systematic ahteist, secular systematic annihilation of jews in the anti-semitic Nazi ideology and practicwe. And we should not forget the Sovjet or Communist anti-semitism, like we are aware of the Islamist anti-semitism of today in Western-Europe, the Middle east and America.

Like we should not accept violent, agressive xenophobia, islamophobia and racism we should not accept anti-semitism. Today Islamophobia, anti-semitism, xenophobia, racism and discrimination of minoritities go hand in hand in Europe.
In the same time we have to watch out for discrimination of christians by secularists and Muslims in parts of Europe where they are a minority, and the Christian minorities in Turkey, Bosnia, Kosovo (The Serb Orthodox minority) and the Middle-east. If they demand that we treat our muslims fair, honestly and equal, they should treat their christian minorities equal, fair and good too. (In Iraq for instance christians are hunted, killed, wounded and driven out).

Pieter

[pjotr]

Ofcourse I am against the discrimination of Muslims in Western-Europe and pro religious freedom, freedom of experssion and organisation. Even when Christians are discriminated in the Islamic world. We are not like them. But in the same time I think that European National politicians and European parlaimentarians should have more attention for the Coptic christians in Egypt, and the Assyrian, Chaldean and Armenian christians in Iraq and Iran.

Pieter

[tufta]

Oct 24, 2010 18:53:18 GMT 1 pjotr said:

In Western-Europe it is important to read differant newspapers and magazines.

haha, but as we observed somewhere else - people do not follow that rule and read less and less.

PS. Why only in Western Europe? What about Americas, Asia, Eastern Europe ;D

[tufta]

Pieter, you are of course right. But if I understand correctly you agree with those present trends in Western Europe which tend to see the Nazi Germany's role in this long chain of human injustice as just one link of it. I am of a slightly different opinion, perhaps a sign of growing up on the ashes, both metaphorically and literally. I still do see the deeds of Nazi Germany as something quite incomparable to anything else. Perhaps not as to the rule, to the idea of getting rid of the whole nations or ethicities, be it Jews, Poles, Russians, Gypsy. The idea was not new nor was the action, a try. But the methods and paranoic meticulousness, massive support for that, were unique. In my opinion incomparable to anything mentioned.

[pjotr]

Oct 24, 2010 19:28:54 GMT 1 tufta said:

Oct 24, 2010 18:53:18 GMT 1 pjotr said:

In Western-Europe it is important to read differant newspapers and magazines.

haha, but as we observed somewhere else - people do not follow that rule and read less and less.

PS. Why only in Western Europe? What about Americas, Asia, Eastern Europe ;D

Everywhere, in Poland too ofcourse. So next to the biased ( ) Gazeta Wyborcza aslo Rzeczpospolita, Fakt, Wprost and last but not least NIE ;D ( )!

[pjotr]

Oct 24, 2010 19:42:04 GMT 1 tufta said:

But if I understand correctly you agree with those present trends in Western Europe which tend to see the Nazi Germany's role in this long chain of human injustice as just one link of it.

No Tufta, I see the Holocaust and the systematic killing of men, women and children by an ideology which trained it's children, teenagers and adults to be the mercyless killers, not as just on of the many massacres in history. But I do see the Nazi killing machine in a historical European perspective of centuries of persecution of jews and christian inquisition. The Nazi racist anti-semitism was biological, secular-atheist, radical and inhuman. If I was a member of the Hindu faith I would say a large part of the German population gave itself a bad Karma back then. We shouldn't forget and I believe in the sentence NEVER AGAIN! We have a moral and ethical duty to prevent or stop any new genocide or Holocaust, where ever it occurs. I understand the deep connection jews all over the world feel with Israel. A jewish girlfriend of mine said, if it goes wrong here (violent anti-semitism against the tiny Jewish minority) she has a suitcase ready to leave for Israel. That says something about Western Europe, doesn't it? She knows that if the situation goes wrong she can't count on the majority of the fellow Dutch, and certainly not the Muslim minority. I have seen the indepth greef, hurt, suffering and damage on people of the Holocaust. People who were left alone, because mother, father, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nieces, cousins en neighbours (of the jewish neighbourhood) did not return. That their belongings, house and bank accounts were gone. That Dutch people were not happy to see them comming back from the camps or hiding. Even people of the second generation, people who never witnessed the war and do not know all those family members that were gone suffer, because they witnessed the silent or not so silent suffering, nightmares of their broken parents. These scenes ofcourse took place all over Europe in all the countries where the jewish communities vanished and only a few returned. In fact the Jewish Europe seazed to exist. Form the tiny minority of jews that stayed in Europe a lot of them moved to the USA, Israel, South-Africa, Australia and other destinations. Many of them wanted to leave the desecrated European soil.

A religious Orthodox can not go to shul in peace on saturday in Amsterdam, Paris or Antwerp, because he is herassed by Arab youth or receives anti-semitic slogans from European hooligangs, leftist or rightwing freaks. Today Western-Europe is not a pleasent place to live in as a Orthodox or recognisable jew.

I can understand that a Dutch, French or Swedish jew feels more comfortable in a Jewish homeland with a jewish majority then in the gentile (Goy) non-jewish lands they are living and feeling the constant threats of verbal abuses, violence and agression towards them. Israel is not safe, but you are under your own people and you are near or in Jerusalem, the place you pray towards three times a day as a Orthodox jew.



Shema Yisrael

Shema Yisrael (or Sh'ma Yisrael or just Shema) (Hebrew: שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל‎; "Hear, [O] Israel") are the first two words of a section of the Torah (Hebrew Bible) that is a centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. The first verse encapsulates the monotheistic essence of Judaism: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one," found in Deuteronomy 6:4.

Observant Jews consider the Shema to be the most important part of the prayer service in Judaism, and its twice-daily recitation as a mitzvah (religious commandment). It is traditional for Jews to say the Shema as their last words, and parents teach it to their children before they go to sleep at night.

Pieter

[pjotr]

It almost looks like if I am a Zionist. The only reason I am not a Zionist is because I am not a Jew.