On Sunday 14th February, neo-Nazis converged on the Castle district in Budapest to commemorate what is known to the extreme right across Europe as the ‘Day of Honour’. This was the failed breakout attempt by 28,000 Nazi Waffen SS and Wehrmacht units, and their Hungarian allies, as the liberating Soviet army encircled Budapest in early 1945. Most were killed or captured, and Budapest was liberated a couple of days later on 13th February, bringing an end to not just to the 50-day siege of the city, but also a halt to the frenzied and murderous onslaught against the Jews of Budapest by Arrow Cross militias. For the first time in years, there was no antifascist counter-demonstration. The police banned any such gatherings, citing the ‘antifa’ legislation passed last year. As reported by Mérce, one result of the law, was that Holocaust survivor Katalin Sommer was unable to deliver her planned speech at the Shoes on the Danube Bank Memorial. So, this year, while neo-Nazis were permitted to strut around the city in Arrow Cross and SS Uniforms and celebrate Hitler’s perpetrators, the Hungarian authorities denied Holocaust survivors and supporters the opportunity to bear witness and pay tribute to the victims of National Socialism. What makes all of this especially obscene is the fact that the Városmajor site chosen by the Hungarian Legion to lay their wreaths in memory of ‘the fallen’ is mere yards away from the site of the atrocious massacre of patients and staff from the Jewish hospital in Maros utca. Between the 12th and 19th of January 1945, in the final days of the siege before the Soviets liberated Budapest, this neighbourhood witnessed some of the most barbaric atrocities by Arrow Cross militias. Under the command of the Catholic Franciscan monk, Father András Kuhn, the fascist militia launched raids against three Jewish health care institutions. The Arrow Cross slaughtered more than 300 mainly sick and elderly people while the Red Army was only a few blocks away. The staging of this overtly Nazi event, with a heavy police presence laid on by the authorities to protect the visitors from possible attacks by ‘antifa’, comes just days after the authorities filed criminal charges against Géza Buzás-Hábel, an activist of Romani origin, a teacher and human rights defender, for organising a peaceful LGBTQI+ rights march in Pécs. This case, as Amnesty noted, marks a troubling escalation in the criminalisation of LGBTQI+ expression and peaceful assembly in Hungary. On the same day, 9th February, supporters gathered outside the Pest Central District Court for the preparatory session of the Methodist pastor Gábor Iványi’s criminal trial. Charged with gang violence against a state official, Iványi told the court he would rather “accept a prison sentence than admit guilt” in what he considers a politically-motivated case ahead of Hungary’s parliamentary elections. Iványi, described by the Budapest mayor as “the living conscience of the city and the country,” has worked alongside and advocated for Roma, refugees, the poor and homeless. This trial is looking like a show trial.
via errc: BUDAPEST: NAZIS OPENLY MARCH IN SS UNIFORMS, WHILE HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR GETS BANNED, AND ROMANI PRIDE ORGANISER GETS PROSECUTED