Annette and Katrina Lantos,
Minister Lapid,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Hungary is a republic of good-willed people. It is a republic in which good-willed people work in the interest of common goals. Or at least this is how we would like it to be in 2013.

The question is whether this statement is in fact true. Can we today call Hungary the republic of good-willed people in which, regardless of world view, race, gender or faith, we discuss world issues, debate with each other, collide our views and sometimes even argue, but always in the interests of a common goal, to make Hungary a better place. A better place for everyone who regards themselves as Hungary's citizen or a citizen of Hungary, or who would simply like to live in Hungary but is the citizen of a another country.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I represent a generation -- I was born in 1966 -- that was not personally a contemporary of the Holocaust. We were born twenty years after 1945 and were separated from the Holocaust by a lifetime; here in Central Europe we were separated by a lifetime from the chapter of politics that cannot be described by rational, cold and scientific categories, because these can at the most provide only knowledge of data, statistics, a few details or the workings of institutions. Through literature, however, we may come to know the madness.

We may come to know what it is like when the human mind, overthrowing the rules of society, disregarding the institutional system and throwing away all everyday rationality, goes on a self-destructive rampage.
What is it like in a period in which the state turns against its own citizens? What is it like in a period in which the institutional system brings decisions with which it alienates good-hearted, good-willed citizens? It begins by destroying within its own community, first in spirit, and then physically. Those who are of my age and come from my generation are also aware that during this period the Hungarian history books were not overflowing with descriptions of the positive nature of Jewish-Hungarian cohabitation. Instead, a kind of silence surrounding the subject was the norm. The fate and viewpoint of the Hungarian Jewish community was sometimes mentioned; it was mentioned in relation to emancipation; it was mentioned in relation to the allowing of civil marriages, and then it was mentioned in relation to the Holocaust. Neither before, nor after.

Our history textbooks did not teach us that Hungary had always been a multi-ethnic, multicultural community in which, in addition to the Slavic, the Romanian and Germanic peoples, the Jews had also lived among us. They furthered the public good, contributed to our culture and enriched the lives of our forefathers.

We only learned this from personal accounts.

I, for instance, remember my father, who grew up in Balatonberény, telling a story of how there was a boy in his class. A man called Braun had a shop in the village and his son was his classmate and in fact shared a desk with my father. And then one day he didn't go to school, and he didn't go to school on the next day either, and they even closed the shop, and when the children asked, nobody told them what had happened, everyone kept quiet in their embarrassment, and everyone said it was better not to ask, not to pry, they probably moved to somewhere else. And then, when we went to Poland on a trip with the family and we were in Auschwitz, then on that wall among the Hungarian victims we found the whole Braun family…

This is how I became aware of the Holocaust and this is why after 1990, when it suddenly became possible to discuss it, when the possibility to debate history suddenly opened up, it was practically a shock to Hungarian society to become aware of the responsibility of the Hungarian state in the Holocaust.

Because [at school] we didn't learn that Hungary was responsible for the Holocaust. What we were taught was that the Horthy fascists, as they called them, were responsible, a separate species of human, with whom we no longer had to bother because this chapter in our history ended in 1945 with the victory of the communists; Hungary had put this chapter behind itself.

And then suddenly in 1990 we were faced with the fact that this wasn't true. In 1990, we were confronted with the fact that the Hungarian state, which operated the institutional system, and which according to our studies followed a thousand-year cultural tradition, had turned against its own citizens and in fact helped in the extermination of its citizens.

Minister Lapid said that he did not want to be rude to his host, but he had no choice but to state that the Hungarians are also responsible for the Holocaust. I, as his host, say to Mr. Lapid that he was not rude. We know that we are also responsible for the Holocaust!

And we know that the institutions of the Hungarian state were responsible for the Holocaust.

It would be easy for me, as a late successor of [wartime] Hungary's Minister of Justice, to avoid all responsibility in the way we were taught to avoid responsibility in the seventies and eighties; that wasn’t us, those were other Hungarians, we don't need to bother with them. But it was us! We know. Even if I and thank God my family are not personally affected, they were Hungarians; the perpetrators were Hungarians, it was Hungarians who fired the shots and it was Hungarians who died, and this is a huge responsibility that we here in Hungary and in Central Europe must face.

We must face it, meaning that we must find those pieces of evidence and find those survivors with relation to whom we can compensate for the failures of the past at least a little, or at least put forward these memories in remembrance. And even this is not easy, because in the meantime I can tell you that we have, especially since the millennium, introduced several measures at an administrative policy level including both centre-right and centre-left Hungarian Governments, to ensure that the victims of the Holocaust receive compensation.

That they receive some compensation so that the memories of Hungary's Jewish community can reappear and once again find their way into the public mind. We know that there is much left to do.

I am sure you all know that in accordance with the Hungarian National Assembly's decision in 2000, the Hungarian Memorial Day for the Victims of the Holocaust has been held every year in Hungary since 2001; we have our own memorial day in addition to the European memorial day. In 1999, we decided to establish the Holocaust Memorial Center, which we duly inaugurated in 2004 in the Páva Street Synagogue. The House of Terror museum opened in 2004 to present the reality of the most terrible period of Hungarian history, its victims, and to confront us with the past. And we also did our best to reawaken local memories. In 2000, we renovated the synagogue in Jánoshalma, and also in 2000 we established the Jewish Collection in Balassagyarmat. In 2002, we renovated the synagogue in Makó and in 2012 we organised a Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Year in cooperation with the Swedish government. On 1 January 2013, we raised the pension supplement of Holocaust survivors by 50%.

We are taking steps to ensure that we can preserve the memories and the survivors for future generations. In Veszprém, the communists turned the synagogue into a coalmine, they built a trust head office and destroyed the Jewish school; they also destroyed the small Jewish quarter, just as they destroyed the memory of the Veszprém Jewry. Despite the fact that the Jewish community of Veszprém had given the Hungarian Jewish community no less of a personality than Chief Rabbi, Professor Ármin Hoffer, or József Schweitzer, who is still alive today and to whom I take this opportunity to wish a long life, by the grace of God.

And yet, if we attempt to search for evidence, then it must be stated that we have no easy task, because the survivors are growing fewer and fewer and some of the memories are disappearing. This is one reason why it is our responsibility to act as quickly as possible to discover as much of the past as possible.

Hungary is a republic of good-willed people. I have said that this is how we would like to see is and I would be glad if you would also go about your daily lives in this manner, but we know that, unfortunately, this is not the case.

Because it can be stated of no country, if only it could be, that it is inhabited only by people of good will. There have always been and there will always be people who live off hate, either because it is hate that makes up the essence of their spirit, or because they see it as a good business opportunity, or because they wish to base their living or their politics on it. And for precisely this reason, while we must rediscover the past, we must not forget about the present.

Legislation has a huge role to play in determining the rules of play of a democratic community. What is permitted and what isn't. And the Members of Parliament here today know precisely the voracity of the debates that have gone on in recent years with regard to the question of where we should draw the lines for Hungarian democracy. Where do we draw the line between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, between freedom of speech and the incitement of hatred? And of course, when the solution is found, it seems simple, but while something remains to be defined, those who have taken part in debates of this kind can explain precisely how difficult and great a dilemma it is.

George Bernard Shaw once said that he didn't like to argue, because by the end of the argument he always ended up realising that he was the one who was wrong. And indeed, this is often the case with parliamentary debates. One arrives with a seemingly solid standpoint of what should and should not be done, and as views collide and one listens to the other viewpoints, one comes to slowly realise, for instance, just what shaky foundations the framework for freedom of speech in Parliament is constructed on.

I am sure you remember that last year the Hungarian Parliament, unfortunately, also provided an example of how difficult it is to draw the line between freedom of speech and hate speech.

The words spoken in Parliament by Márton Gyöngyösi, which was picked up by the international press, unfortunately did a lot of damage to the reputation of Hungarian democracy, and as a result the House Rules have been made stricter and freedom of speech in Parliament has been somewhat restricted. Let us be honest, this is in fact what happened. Precisely so that it would become impossible to incite hatred in Parliament, and I say again to Minister Lapid: We have learned from the past!

We know exactly what happened here and for precisely this reason we are determined not to allow it to happen again.

This democracy defends itself. It defends itself and it defends every one of its citizens against those who want to incite hatred. Making legislation stricter, incorporating hate speech regulations into the law and providing an opportunity for a member of a social group to launch a class action suit against an individual if they feel a certain deed to be derogatory, are all designed to enable everyone in Hungary to feel safe.

Hungary is a republic of good-willed people, or at least we would like it to be. This is what I said. And for this to remain the case in the future, or for us to perhaps move a little closer to achieving our dream that Hungary will truly be a republic of good-willed people, we have much to do for the future. Because what we do for the children of today, we do for the future of Hungary. Whether they be Hungarian, Croatian, Serbian, Jewish, Roma, Romanian, German or of whatever nationality; those who live here, whose relatives live here, who want to live here, or who simply like this country. And since we are fully aware of our responsibility, we decided that 2014 would the Holocaust Memorial Year in Hungary. And because we are fully aware of the fact that we can only come to grips with this responsibility in the light of the future, we decided that Holocaust Memorial Year would be centred around education and teaching.

What we were not taught, we must teach our children. We must teach our children not only about the responsibility of the state in the Holocaust, but we must also teach our children about the achievements of the several hundred years of peaceful Hungarian-Jewish cohabitation. Because it is my view that we have an intrinsically positive history. This community brought with it one of Central Europe's strongest and richest cohabitations and communities for centuries.

This community brought to Hungary and the cities beyond Hungary's borders a development of culture, the economy and every aspect of life, brought such wealth and such a positive example of cohabitation that it must be a lesson to all of our children.

It must be a lesson so that the horrors of the past are not repeated; it must be a lesson so that the haters of today will have no one to replace them. And it must be a lesson so that the Hungary of the future can be the republic of good-willed people.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

There is no doubt that there are some politicians and some political groupings in Hungarian politics who think that Hungary can have a future within a sea of hate. We are not one of these. We are among those who are positive that Hungary can only have a future if the country's every citizen, and every relative, acquaintance and friend of every citizen and every friend of Hungary feels good here and feels safe here.

We cannot allow our citizens to be discriminated against for any reason. We cannot especially while being conscious of our responsibility for the past, allow anti-Semitism to gain strength in Hungary.

If needed, we will make our legal instruments stricter, and we must apply political means as far as possible, so that Hungary is the republic of good-willed people.

Thank you for your kind attention.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)