Paris, 27 January 2014
Dear Rabbi Lau, Irina Bokova, Eric de Rothschild, Samuel Pizar,
In the name of my homeland and Hungary, I would like to thank you for the opportunity of being able to speak to you this evening, and if Rabbi Lau will allow me, I will present my speech in Hungarian tonight. But first of all, I would like to thank you, in the name of my compatriots, for the opportunity. This is why I would like to give a special welcome to Mr. András Heisler, President of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities [Mazsihisz], Mr. Gusztáv Zoltai, Director of Mazsihisz, Mr. György Szabó, head of our joint foundations, and Mr. Gábor Gordon and Péter Répás, who are the heads of the March of the Living organisation in Hungary. I would like to ask you all to stand up and give a round of applause to the leader of Jewish public life in Hungary.
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear guests,
An entry in the encyclopaedia can at the most teach our children that the Holocaust is the tragedy of 6 million European Jews. Therefore, it is our duty to teach them that the Holocaust is not only the tragedy of 6 million men, women and children: it is the tragedy of all of mankind.
As the Hungarian Catholic poet János Pilinszky put it: the Holocaust is the offence of the century. And by that – according to Imre Kertész, an Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate Hungarian writer – he meant that ”the Holocaust occurred in a Christian cultural environment, so for those with a metaphysical turn of mind it can never be overcome.”
The Holocaust, the Shoa, is an experience of mankind irrespectively of one’s geographical and temporal limitations. It is a universal lesson.
It must be like that, and it must become that – or else we don’t deserve to be called „ humans”. If this is not so, we are not worthy of the Creator’s entrusting us to the care of this planet and furnishing us – alone of the creatures on this planet – with mind and spirit.
Because having a mind and spirit is not just a right. It is also an obligation.
Murder, and especially genocide, is the violation of the right to human existence, and the infringement of the duties implied by human existence. It is in fact the betrayal of the Creator.
Apart from its universality, the Holocaust for we Hungarians is also our national tragedy. In the Hungarian language we call the Shoa the "age of calamities". How fateful and atavistic it would sound if it could be properly translated into English!
Indeed, the Shoa, the Holocaust, is a national tragedy for us. Twice so.
On one hand, because every tenth victim of the Holocaust, and every third victim of the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, were Hungarian citizens.
And on the other hand, because not only many of the victims, but also many of the perpetrators were Hungarian.
The Holocaust for the Hungarians is the ancient, biblical sin: fratricide. It is the betrayal of everything that our culture and national identity was built on. It is akin to high treason against Hungary.
It is so, because in Hungary, in this East-European country which has been doubly impacted by the Holocaust for many decades, the prevailing ideology was the adulteration and obscuring of the past.
„To forget our past is to obliterate the moral divide between the culprit and the victim. To forget ourselves”. This was the price that the communist despotism demanded in return for the deceptive comfort of goulash-communism.
In the years of communist dictatorship, the politics of oblivion and the culture of collective amnesia prevented the Hungarians from facing their past and atoning for their sins. Therefore they lacked a kind of catharsis without which there can be neither purgation nor a new beginning.
However, Ladies and Gentlemen, I must admit that the free Hungary – born after the breakdown of the iron curtain, and after the regime change – still owes its people this catharsis.
For years and decades on end the semi-truth associated with the Holocaust prevailed. Or if we put it simply: the lie. That the crimes were committed not only against us. But that we also committed crimes against ourselves. Through passivity and, unfortunately, also through action. On one hand, some of the leaders of the Hungarian state were personally and severely accountable for deporting Hungarian Jews. For condemning their won citizens to death. On the other hand, the Hungarian state was incapable of protecting its own citizens, and did not do everything in its power to do so.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We know: facing the truth is a painful and long process that is fraught with controversy. Perhaps, by definition, this can never fully come to an end.
Embarking on this road is a cumbersome process, but the only one that can lead us to a world in which Auschwitz can never happen again! Never again!
On this road, today is an important milestone. Or perhaps it is better to say: what this day symbolises is crucial. May I express my thanks with due respect to Director General Bokova and UNESCO for the common thinking and supportive cooperation in our work!
Please allow me again here and now, on behalf of the Hungarian Government to reinforce the commitment that evoked this cooperation and has existed ever since. Hungary is a committed supporter to and partner in achieving the goals and noble missions of UNESCO, and is an earnest promoter of the Holocaust educational programme!
If anything, the first and foremost message at the 70th anniversary must be this: The Hungarian state shall never again fail to defend any Hungarian citizen. The Hungarian state shall protect all of its subjects. It will defend them from murderous intent, from external enemies and from internal betrayal. Hungary, this post-Holocaust, new European country, has learned the historical lesson and will not let anyone forget it!
Ladies and Gentlemen!
The objective of the Hungarian Government is to make the memorial year of the Holocaust in Hungary a time, when it faces its past. To make it a turning point in the life of free Hungary.
Because this painful anniversary cannot bear further incompleteness, and cannot tolerate more self-deception. And Hungary today has a government which is not only ready, but which is also able to implement this turn in our commemorative policy.
Facing the past means for us that we won’t have two types of history book to match the political preferences and the ideology, respectively. We shall have only one book, a common book of history.
If new generations learn from it, they will grow up in such a way that the national remembrance they learn about at school and the memories that they inherit from their parents or grandparents will not be contradictory.
The commemorative year of the Holocaust is about education. In both the real and the abstract senses of the word. Because we are convinced that one of the most important duties of Schools after the Holocaust for each European nation is to make sure that what happened 70 years ago should never ever happen again.
Facing the past therefore means that we make we make it a moral law to perform remembrance and put a ban on forgetting. Putting it differently: our objective is that in the 21st century in Hungary, everyone growing up to be an adult should know the sins that the Hungarians have committed against themselves, and should also remember those Hungarians who saved the lives of others.
Because these saviours were also forgotten by us: we were unfaithful to them, too, just as we were unfaithful to those, who were saved by them.
However, a selective memory is no cure for selective forgetfulness!
Now, as we perform belated penance after all those decades during which evil Hungarians were slowly erased from national remembrance, we should not be carried away! We must not forget about the Righteous among the nations!
We must remember the fairness and decency that those brave people preserved even in the most abominable times. We must remember them and we must ensure that others remember them. If you will allow me, I would like to borrow the term for them: “Righteous among Hungarians”!
Those, who not only saved the lives of their fellow countrymen, but who also defended the reputation of Hungary.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Guests,
On of our greatest Hungarian poets, Attila József, wrote a famous piece of verse about the Danube, Europe's great river, which in its never-ending meandering is also a symbol of Hungarian history.
70 years ago, this river was the watery grave of many of our compatriots. Only their lonely shoes remained after the Hungarians who were shot and pushed into the river, the bronze replicas of which can still be seen on the Pest embankment of the Danube today.
This is the last verse from this great poem, and please allow me to finish my speech by quoting it to you:
“Enough of conflict goes
Into that need which must confess the past.
The Danube’s tender ripples which compose
Past, present, future, hold each other fast.
The battle which our ancestors once fought
Through recollection is resolved in peace,
And settling at long last the price of thought,
This is our task, and none too short its lease. “
Thank you for your kind attention!
(Prime Minister's Office)
