Maybe Hungary has changed and my inherited prejudices against the Hungarian people may be obsolete and wrong. Hungary's parliament has passed a bill making Holocaust denial punishable by up to three years in prison. The bill was submitted by Attila Mesterhazy, the prime ministerial candidate of the governing Socialist Party, by 197-1. This law makes of Hungarian Jews something of a protected ethnic minority. They changed; am I able to change? Yes.
11 comments:
I have mixed feelings about such laws. In the US, it is unconstitutional for the government to make any form of speech a crime. There are nuts who are free to deny the Holocaust and yet no one takes them seriously anyway. In fact they more they talk the more they reveal themselves to be insane. I understand the fear that in Europe, with it much deeper traditions of anti-Semitism, there is fear that such deniers might actually gain traction, but as the vote itself revealed, such opinions do not appeal to most people.
K
I agree with K that treating Holocaust denial as a crime serves some purpose in those European countries where the Holocaust took place. In particular the Germans and Austrians have used these laws to keep the Nazis from regrouping. But in later years the environment created by these laws have enabled the Left to broadly brush anyone who is a nationalist, someone who wants to keep alien thugs out, with the Nazi taint. For a time they were successful. Much of Europe is in flux with the people not knowing which way to turn in the face of a concerted assault from the Left and their Muslim charges. In this setting the accusation of Holocaust denial is a tool to silence the Right. At the same time one has to be blind not to notice that much of the antisemitism in Europe in fact emanates from the Muslims, as the new from Malmo and the other smaller European cities makes clear. It is natural that the ordinary citizenry resent being tarred with the crimes and opinions of the Muslims, when they had very little say in the wholesale importation of Muslims by the political and business elites. More of them will grow inured to the charge of antisemitism.
Hungary though is one of those countries where too many citizens participated in exterminating the Jews, even Catholic converts did not escape. I don't know what sick hand of fate it was that enabled the Nazis even as their armies and cities were reeling from the Allied onslaught, when it was clear to all in 1944 that Germany was doomed, to carry out their plans.
To answer Ivan's question (if such a question is answerable) I will tell you that my father's SS guards guarded (and sometimes killed) their prisoners until the very last minute, until the American tanks overran their positions. In the last days, some of the guards wore civilian clothes under their uniforms so they could shed the uniforms and quickly run away when finally overtaken, but they did not shirk from their duty to kill Jews.
My father said that the SS had the mentality that their charges were dangerous criminals who could not be set free under any circumstances (even though the were just a miserable band of barely alive Jews). Imagine that you are appointed to guard Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorists. Imagine that the war on terror is going poorly - you would think to yourself, "now is precisely the time when my services are needed most and I must redouble my efforts. Even if the war is lost, my people will secretly thank me later."
K
Salut!
"...something of a protected ethnic minority."
Ethnic= social artificial construction "race"! have nothing to do with genes.
P.S. Who will protect majority ?
I can't support such a law.
Aside from any law, the Hungarians wouldn't be whining that the Israelis are buying up their country if they had shed their anti-Semitism. A law isn't going to change how they see the world, and conversely if they do change how they view the world no such law would be necessary.
Why don't the Jews of Hungary move to Israel?
The Jews of Hungary have deep Hungarian roots as they have been living in the country much before the Hungarians conquered and peopled it.
Hungarian Jews speak Hungarian, a peculiar language. Hungarian speakers can never learn to speak another language without accent. They will always feel at home only among Hungarians.
Hungarian food is like a drug, Hungarian born people cannot live without it.
As my grandfather used to say before WWII (as told me by my father), when they sent them visas to America (we had rich relatives in the Missouri I think, they had a supermarket chain) he used to say "Why should I move to America? For us Hungary is America". In other words, Jews always prospered and prosper in Hungary.
Yes, Hungary was just like America, except for the 1919 Communist revolution and the White Terror and the Arrow Cross, etc. People are capable of incredible feats of denial and rationalization if it suits their purposes. Giving up your homeland is never easy, which is why your frequently expressed hope that the Jews of America will make aliyah in large numbers will never happen, at least until things become much worse in America.
PS It is possible to cook gulyas even if you are in America or Israel.
K
J said...
Hungarian food is like a drug, Hungarian born people cannot live without it.
I've never encountered food that was that good, so I can't say I believe you. There is no way in Hell that food can be *that* good.
While the law punishes Holocaust denial, the hungarian judges are the ones in charge of enforcing it, and that's why I think nothing will really change...
Let me disagree, Peter, because after WWII, the Hungarian State is actively erradicating antisemitism. Immediately after the war, many Hungarian nazis were hanged and under Communism, antisemitism was persecuted. There is now a fifty years old tradition of fighting antisemitic movements. And surprisingly, Hungarian Jews are coming out of hiding to enforce the law. I have seen clips of elderly Jews physically attacking antisemitic manifestations. The skinheads didnt know what to do with them. Hungary today would nothing best than be like Germany, so I hope the legislation will be enforced. I wish there were more Jews left in Hungary.
I do not trust anything that Communists do - if they fought anti-Semitism in Hungary it was only in the interest of consolidating their power and eliminating opposition. They did not give a damn about the Jews themselves and were oppressing Jewish religious practice at the same time that they were persecuting anti-Semites. There's a reason why many of the Hungarian Jews that managed to survive the Holocaust subsequently left, despite the strong cultural ties they had with Hungary.
K
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