Hungary protests against Holocaust comments by FBI director
April 23rd, 2015Népszabadság takes up the defence of FBI director James Corney who said that Nazis and their accomplices in many countries, including Hungary, thought they were doing the right thing. The left-wing daily says leading Hungarian government politicians have amply confessed Hungary’s war time sins.
In an article in the Washington Post, Mr Corney wrote, after visiting the Washington Holocaust Museum that “In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t do something evil.” The Polish Foreign Ministry immediately protested, saying that Poland was a victim of Nazi occupation. Soon the Hungarian Foreign Ministry followed suit, claiming that the statement made by Mr Corney contained a gross and offensive generalisation. The State Department then explained that the United States has always held in high esteem those who courageously fought Nazism. This was welcomed by Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szíjjártó as a timely apology.
In a front page editorial, Népszabadság says Poles had more reason to protest, for the Polish state was crushed at the moment of Nazi invasion in 1939, while when Hungary was invaded by Hitlerite Germany in 1944, the state apparatus continued to function and was an accomplice in the Holocaust – as several members of the present government also recalled during the Holocaust remembrance events of last year.