Holocaust Memorial Day was held in Hungary

“We trust that Hungary will always remain an island of peace and safety for the Jewish community, Hungarians and everyone else,” a government official said on Monday marking Holocaust Memorial Day. The prime minister’s office also pays tribute to the almost 600,000 Hungarian victims of the Holocaust, persecuted mostly because of their Jewish faith, the office said in a statement.

The government trusts that Hungary will remain a country in which “nobody has to be afraid of being discriminated based on their origin, customs or culture”, Bence Rétvári, state secretary at the human resources ministry, said at the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest.

Rétvári expressed his hope that Hungary would be able to protect its Jewish community, not just from the “old”, but also “the new kind of anti-Semitism”, in the future, too.

He said that in recent years, the government has combatted anti-Semitism not just in words, but in action as well.

Prime Minister’s office marks Holocaust Memorial Day

The whole of Europe bears responsibility for educating future generations to learn from the sins of the past and understand the consequences, the statement said. The Hungarian memorial day keeps the memory of the “martyrs and life-saving heroes” alive, it said. It also calls on all to strengthen solidarity, a feeling of community and mutual tolerance, it said.