Hungarian parliamentarian wants to register Jews

Hungary has a Jewish population of 100,000, the largest in Central Europe.

An anti-Semitic member of the Hungarian parliament called for Hungarian Jews to be registered as national security threats. After being criticized in Hungary and condemned around the world, the legislator alleges that he only meant Hungarian Jews who also held Israeli passports.

That this person and his extremist party are not marginalized and instead have won a seat in parliament is another symptom of Hungary’s failure to come to terms with its history as an ally of Nazi Germany and an active participant in the Holocaust.

Four months ago a 97 year old wanted Hungarian war criminal who was hiding in Hungary was arrested.  That he was able to hide for so long raises very serious questions about continuing Hungarian complicity.

Hungary’s hiding of a war criminal, continuing suppression of history, and avoidance of acknowledgement of direct participation in the Holocaust is almost as serious as outright Holocaust denial.

In 1940 the Hungarian government voluntarily allied with Nazi Germany.

Hungarian anti-Semitic fascists were not coerced by the Nazis to participate in the Holocaust. Hungarian fascists with the support of the Hungarian government eagerly, enthusiastically and violently rounded up their fellow Hungarian citizens who were also Jews to be shipped to Nazi death camps. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was attempting to save Hungarian Jews not from Nazi Germans but from Hungarian fascists.

Of Hungary’s estimated pre-WWII Jewish population of 455,000, 265,500 were killed.

During the Cold War, The Soviet Union and the Hungarian Communist Party created the fiction that the crimes of Hungary were those of capitalists and fascists. They shielded Hungary from consequences of their Nazi alliance and participation in the Holocaust.

The Soviet Union has fallen, the Cold War is over, and Hungary is independent.

The time has long passed for Hungary to follow the example of Germany and acknowledge its history.

The time has come for Hungary to start behaving like a mature member of the family of civilized nations by taking responsibility for their share of the Holocaust.

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Hungarian Official’s Call to List Jews Draws Condemnation and Protests By REUTERS,  November 28, 2012, The New York Times.

War Crimes Suspect Is Detained in Budapest By PALKO KARASZ,  July 18, 2012, The New York Times.

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For more information:

Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

Virginia Holocaust Museum

Documentary “Jews in the Warsaw Rising 1944” Screening in Skokie on Nov. 29, 2012

Anna Ferens  2004 film:
“Jews in the Warsaw Rising 1944”
“Zydzi w powstaniu warszawskim“

FILM SCREENING:

Jews in the Warsaw Rising 1944 (Zydzi w powstaniu warszawskim)

Thursday, November 29, 2012 | 6:30 pm

The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center
9603 Woods Drive
Skokie, IL 60077

This film recalls the break out of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 during which 40,000 soldiers of the Home Army, many of whom were Jewish, engaged in an open battle against Nazi Germany. After 63 days of heroic fighting, the Home Army eventually surrendered. The memory of the Warsaw Uprising has become sacred to the Polish community.

Q&A with the film’s director, Anna Ferens, follows the screening.

The visit of the filmmaker to Chicago, as well as a series of screenings of her documentaries, are sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Chicago.

Reservations recommended

reservations@ilhmec.org, 847.967.4889.

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WWII Polish History:

One of the last great moments in the history of the diverse Slavic Jewish nation of Poland was when Slavic and Jewish Polish men and women fought side by side in an effort to liberate Warsaw from the Nazis just before the arrival of the Soviets.

The hope was that success would place Poland in a better position to secure its independence after WWII.

The reality was that after the Nazis defeated the Poles,  the Soviets captured Warsaw. Then the Soviets rounded up as many of the Polish Home Army survivors as they could and executed both Jewish and Slavic Poles if they suspected them of being potential opponents of Soviet occupation and rule by the Polish Communist Party.

Prior to the Holocaust Poland was one of the most ethnically, religiously, culturally, and linguistically diverse nations in Europe. The Nazis and the Soviets (with Allied complicity) forever destroyed that.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and their allied Communist Parties, including the American Communist Party,  suppressed the full history of WWII Poland including how Slavic and Jewish Poles served and died side by side from the first shots in 1939 through both the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 until the end of WWII and after.

While the diverse Polish nation can never be restored, its memory should not be lost. I can’t think of a better way than showing this Polish made film at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.

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Schedule of Chicago area screenings of Anna Ferens’ documentaries. Organized by Polish Consulate General in Chicago.

Warsaw Ghetto prisoners liberated during second Warsaw Uprising

In The Second World War, Antony Beevor reports one of the actions of the Polish Home Army during the second uprising in Warsaw in 1944:

On August 5 (1944) the (Polish) Home Army attacked the concentration camp on the site of the flattened (Warsaw Jewish) ghetto, killed the SS guards, and released the remaining 348 Jewish prisoners (page 610).

In October, the Nazis forced the surrender of the Home Army survivors.  Some were immediately executed. Others were shipped to Auschwitz for extermination. A few were imprisoned  in the same Warsaw Ghetto concentration camp that they had liberated two months earlier (page 616).

Many of those who were still alive when the Soviets drove the Nazis from Poland were executed by their “liberators”.

The Soviets and pro-Soviet Communist Parties spent 1/2 century suppressing these details. Recently published histories such as Anthony Beevor’s are now telling the complete and accurate story.

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For more information:

Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

Virginia Holocaust Museum

Jews of Kiev victims first of Soviet censorship

The direct role of the Soviet Union in the Holocaust has barely begun to enter public consciousness. Antony Beevor’s The Second World War is another of a growing number of post Cold War histories of WWII that are now correcting that omission.

Antony Beevor reports:

The Nazis’ murderous intentions were unexpectedly helped by a curious by-product of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the Nazi-Soviet military, political, and economic alliance from August 1939 until June, 1941). Stalinist censorship had stifled any of Hitler’s virulent anti-semitism. As a result, when the Jews in Kiev were ordered to report for ‘resettlement’  no fewer than 33,771 turned up as instructed. (pp. 215-216)

Soviet Holocaust complicity runs much deeper.

Soon after the Nazis came  to power they reached an agreement with  the Soviets to develop and test new military technology in the Soviet Union. This was part of the Nazi’s evasion of the prohibition on German rearmament,

The Soviets were the Nazis’ major supplier of manganese with which the Nazis made the steel for their transports, armored vehicles, and munitions. Those vehicles were fueled with Soviet oil. The Nazi troops and their transport horses were fed with Soviet grain.

With that direct Soviet support, the Nazis captured most of the European Jews that the Nazis exterminated. Among the first victims were Polish Jewish soldiers captured by the Nazis. Rather than treat them as POWs, the Nazis summarily executed them.

Among the later victims were German Jewish refugees hiding in other countries such as the Frank family. With direct Soviet support, the Nazis overran Holland which eventually resulted in the deaths of most of the Frank family and over 102,000 other Jews in Holland.

The overthrow of  the Nazi government of Germany and Austria did not relieve the successor states of their responsibility for the Holocaust.

In the same way, the successor states or the Soviet Union, especially Russia and the Ukraine, h ave not been relieved of their responsibilities because of the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the very least the successor states owe the world an acknowledgment for their share of responsibility for the Holocaust.

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For more information:

Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

Virginia Holocaust Museum