Deputy speaker calls for Slovak-Hungarian lawmaker’s rehabilitation

Budapest, March 13 (MTI) – Slovakia’s failure to rehabilitate János Esterházy, a martyred leader of Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarian community, damages the reputation of the Slovak state and should be amended, Deputy Speaker of Parliament Gergely Gulyás said in Budapest on Sunday.

Gulyás called Esterházy one of the most respectable Hungarian politicians of the 20th century who can serve as a model for any nation.

Rehabilitating “this public servant who was even prepared to sacrifice his life for his nation” would lie in the interest of the state that sent him to prison, he said.

Count János Esterházy (1901-1957), the sole Hungarian deputy in the Slovak Parliament before 1945, was a firm advocate of the ethnic Hungarian community, raising his voice against any violation of minority rights and against discrimination. He was the only member of the Slovak Parliament to vote against the law on the deportation of Jews in 1942.