March in Hungary Remembers Holocaust

March in Hungary Remembers Holocaust

April 28, 2014

Yori Yalon, The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Some 12,000 people participate in march honoring the memory of the 550,000 Hungarian Jews who perished in the Holocaust • "I have deliberately come on this march to ask for forgiveness from the Jewish people and the survivors," one participant says.

Sunday's march in Budapest  |  Photo credit: AFP

Some 12,000 people participated in a march through Budapest Sunday, honoring the memory of the 550,000 Hungarian Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Several Hungarian MPs participated in the march alongside Israel Ambassador to Hungary Ilan Mor, former Chief Justice Aharon Barak and heads of the local Jewish community.

Seeking atonement for their relatives, the grandchildren of some of those involved in the Holocaust joined the march, which began with a ceremony by the Danube River, on the site of a new monument for Hungary's Jewish community. Participants then marched some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) to Budapest, where another ceremony was held, marking the 70th anniversary for the community's destruction.

"Unfortunately, the past decade has seen anti-Semitism rear its head again and every year we see in increase in violent anti-Semitic incidents around the world," Yaakov Haguel, head of the World Zionist Organization's Department for Countering Anti-Semitism, said.

"The World Zionist Organization strongly condemns any and all physical violence, anti-Semitic expressions, incitement and heinous blood libel," he said. "I urge everyone to fight this horrific phenomenon and make it extinct."

Frank Pfeiffer's grandfather voluntarily joined the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the Nazi Party, while his wife Barbel's grandfather helped build the electrical system at the Auschwitz death camp, including the wiring of its gas chambers.

At Auschwitz, about a third of its victims were Hungarian Jews.

"I have deliberately come on this march to ask for forgiveness from the Jewish people and the survivors," said Pfeiffer, a 44-year-old travel agent. "As the grandchild of a perpetrator, I want to express how deeply sorry I am at what my grandfather did."

The couple did not discover the truth about their relatives' actions until about 12 years ago, when they began researching their families' pasts.

"We are here with my husband to say the words our grandparents were incapable of," Barbel Pfeiffer said during Friday's remembrance at the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities. "Words cannot undo the events of the past, but we regret what happened with all our hearts."

Commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust in Hungary have been tainted by disputes between Hungarian Jewish groups and Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government.

Authorities have acknowledged and apologized for Hungarians' actions in the Holocaust, but a statue commemorating the 1944 Nazi occupation of Hungary is being erected despite protests from Jewish groups, who see the memorial as an attempt to diminish Hungarian officials' role in the deportations.

Zoltan Pokorni, a former education minister, said last week that Germany's occupation of Hungary was "an explanation, but not an excuse" for the fate of Hungarian Jews.

"The murderers were Hungarian and the victims were also Hungarian," Pokorni said. "This is our issue, not a distant historical question."

A German pastor began the March of Life events in 2007. Since then, more than 20,000 people have taken part in reconciliation marches in 13 countries.