As Index previously reported, Janos Lazar delivered a new railway history exhibit for the Transport Museum in Kindriesen at the local railway station, while city government politicians laid wreaths at the grave of Miklós Horthy, who was just reburied thirty years ago. According to Janos Lazar, the ruler was an exceptional head of state, a true Hungarian patriot, and a heroic soldier.
János Lazar also said in the New Railway History exhibition that Horthy saved the country in 1919 from the fate intended for Hungary by the “Western powers”.
Chief Rabbi Robert Fröhlich did not leave this unanswered and responded to what the minister said with two quotes by Horthy from a 1940 letter to Pal Teleki and a 1943 letter to Hitler. According to the National Chief Rabbi, Janos Lazar was right: “We must speak clearly and unambiguously” about the former ruler. Who can speak more clearly about Miklos Horthy if not him? asks the rabbi.
“As for the Jewish question, I have been an anti-Semite all my life, and have never had any contact with Jews. I thought it unacceptable that everything here in Hungary – every factory, bank, estate, shop, theatre, newspaper, trade, etc. .to be in the hands of the Jews, and that the reflection of the Hungarian—especially abroad”—is the Jew, as Horthy wrote in one of his letters.
In the letter to Hitler, the governor had already written that “further measures are under way for the gradual exclusion of the Jews, and as soon as the conditions for their removal are created, we will carry it out.”
The United States is concerned about this issue
David Pressman, the US ambassador to Budapest, also responded to the issue, speaking on his X page.
Miklós Horthy was complicit in the massacre of the Hungarian Jewish population during the Holocaust. The United States is concerned that a senior official in Orbán’s government has been implicated in efforts to rehabilitate and consolidate a brutal legacy
Pressman said.
Miklós Horthy was complicit in the massacre of the Jewish population of Hungary during the Holocaust. The United States is concerned about the involvement of a senior Orban government official in efforts to rehabilitate and enhance his brutal legacy.
— Ambassador David Pressman (@USAmbHungary) September 5, 2023
