For a nation, nothing is more destructive than being forbidden to remember its past. For forty years this was the case in our country, but now we are free to remember those who were murdered by a totalitarian system, said Zoltán Kovács, Minister of State for Government Communication, at the opening event of the Holocaust Memorial Day at the Földes Ferenc Secondary School in Miskolc.

As part of this event, students at the secondary school remembered the tragedy with a mime performance. The event took place in the presence of members of the Government, including Deputy Ministers of State Csaba Latorca and Ferenc Zombor, and Ervin Demeter, the government commissioner of the local county government office.

Friday’s remembrance event in Győr, the ‘March of Life’ being held this weekend, and the remembrance in Miskolc all aim to encourage open discussion of the past. The subject is one of the many aspects of Hungarian history that people were not allowed to talk about for more than forty years, said the Minister of State for Government Communication.

Mr. Kovács stated that in his opinion each and every national tragedy should be a subject of discussion for many generations to come, to enable the messages and significance of each to be assimilated, and for them to be given their proper place in history.

He stressed that the best guarantors of remembrance are young students, because they openly and honestly ask about details with curiosity.

He stated that the events of sixty-seven years ago were indefensible and should never have been allowed to happen. He went on to say that ‘Hungarians turned against Hungarians’, and that although German officers led the operation to force some 400,000 Jewish people into ghettos, this was done in collaboration with Hungarians.

Mr. Kovács said that the Jewish tragedy is also our national tragedy, and not just of Budapest, but the entire country.

He reiterated that mutual reflection is needed through the generations in order to understand and assimilate the significance of these tragedies, and it is our responsibility to talk about the reality of the past with unflinching objectivity.

(kormany.hu)