Victims of Communism day
February 27th, 2015Commenting on the commemorations for the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communism, a leading webmagazine suggests that the spiritual damage caused by decades of Communism still weighs heavily on Hungarian society.
The days of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and the victims of Communism were launched by the first Orbán government in 1999 and 2000 respectively. Since then, commemorations have been held each year, irrespective of the political colour of the incumbent government.
On Origo, Tamás Elter finds it unfair that history let Communist leaders with blood on their hands die peacefully in bed, while chief Nazi perpetrators were rightly condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunal. The dubious glories of some Communist dictators are even celebrated to this day with monuments and mausoleums. The Hungarian Communist leaders responsible for stifling democracy and torturing and killing innocent people also died in peace and except for a few scapegoats have never been brought to justice. (Former Interior Minister and high ranking Communist Party official Béla Biszku’s five year prison sentence is currently under appeal. See BudaPost, 2012 through 2014.) The damage caused in hearts and minds, Elter writes, cannot be quantified but is still felt in Hungarian society.