Budapest is preparing for the European Memorial Day of the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes. Representatives of the Members States of the European Union are to attend a conference in the Hungarian capital on Wednesday, 23 August. The host of the Memorial Day is Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Public Administration and Justice Dr Tibor Navracsics. Member States of the EU will be represented by justice ministers and state secretaries.

The official state commemorative service will begin at 9.00 a.m. outside the House of Terror Museum which will be followed by joint candle lighting in memory of the victims of totalitarian regimes. The venue is symbolic; the Hungarian House of Terror Museum is one of Europe’s most dramatic museums. Its permanent exhibition is designed to process the terror of the totalitarian dictatorships experienced by Hungary, Nazism and communism. The museum operates in a building at Andrássy út 60. where prisoners were tortured and interrogated during the years of communist terror.

After the commemorative service held outside the House of Terror Museum, Tibor Navracsics will welcome the ministers and state secretaries arriving at the Parliament Building. This will be followed by a conference organised under the title Facing the Past that deals with the issues of the Memorial Day. The opening speech will be delivered by President of the Republic János Áder; the representatives of all attending countries will speak at the event. At the conference, the attending European memory institutes will sign a joint declaration in which they will confirm their determination to create an institute to house a joint exhibition that introduces the history of Europe in the 20th century.

The Memorial Day came into being in the wake of a joint Hungarian-Lithuanian-Polish initiative; the Justice Ministers of the EU Member States approved the Council conclusions commemorating the victims of crimes committed by totalitarian regimes at a conference held in Luxembourg, in June 2011, during Hungary’s EU Presidency. They appointed 23 August as the memorial day for a joint European commemoration because this was the day on which the foreign ministers of the Soviet and German empires signed the document, that later became known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as a secret clause attached to the German-Soviet treaty of non-aggression, in 1939. In this, they agreed on the division of Europe’s eastern regions into interest spheres.

In his opening speech, Václav Havel, former Czech head of state (1993-2003), too, underlined the significance of commemoration at the international conference European Conscience and Communism held in Prague in June 2008 when he declared, „Europe bears extraordinary responsibility for Nazism and communism, the two totalitarian regimes that were born and conceived on this continent”.

The first commemoration was held in August 2011, in Warsaw, during Poland’s EU Presidency. In his speech, Tibor Navracsics, one of the initiators of the Memorial Day, said at the time that that we need a Europe that is based on common values. He mentioned the culture of democracy, constitutionality and open society as the main core values. He stressed that we must help the countries that are fighting against totalitarianism also today. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, we need a memorial day for the commemoration of the victims of totalitarian regimes so that the horrors of the past may never happen again. He stressed that democracy is opposed to all totalitarian regimes.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)