68 years ago today, the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau were liberated. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Hungarian Government pays its respects to the victims. The painful anniversary compels every good-hearted Hungarian to pay their tributes

Hungary is the home of the largest Jewish community in Central Europe, the flowering culture of which has always been an integral part of Hungarian culture, and remains so today. The 1944-45 tragedy of the Jewish people is thus also the tragedy of the Hungarian nation.

The Hungarian Government feels that it is its moral and political obligation to consistently confront the dictatorships of the 20th century and the atrocities they committed. We have introduced Holocaust Remembrance Day in every Hungarian school, established the House of Terror Museum, and it is almost ten years now since the Holocaust Memorial Center began operating in Budapest. 2014 is the 70th anniversary of the annihilation of the Hungarian Jews, in view of which the Hungarian Government has formed the Hungarian Holocaust 2014 Committee.

It is my form belief that Hungary is a country in which people can never again suffer disadvantage or indignity because of their origin or faith. We shall protect the country's every citizen and know no compromise in this regard. We shall not tolerate and strongly condemn the stigmatising of minorities in any form, and every expression of anti-Semitism.

27 January, 2013. Budapest.

Viktor Orbán
The Prime Minister of Hungary

(Prime Minister's Office)