Hungarian Jews remember Holocaust -Tragedy 80 years after release of Auschwitz

Budapest, Hungary (AP) – on 80 -Year anniversary Of the release of Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp, where almost half a million Hungarian Jews lost their lives in the hands of the Nazis, Tamás Léderer still cannot shake the feeling that the world has not learned from the horrors of the 20th century.

Born in Budapest in 1938, Léderer survived, unlike most of Hungary’s Jewish population, Holocaust and avoided deportation to German camps by hiding in basements in Hungary’s capital. His parents, he said, tore the mandatory yellow star from his clothes to hide the fact that he was Jewish.

As the world observes International Holocaust -er Remedy Day Monday, 80 years after the Nazis’ most notorious death camp at Auschwitz was freed by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945, says Léderer, 87 that the risk of hate -driven violence against Jews and other groups continues to disturb him.

“I must not forget it,” he said of the fate of about 565,000 Hungarian Jews who perished in the Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews and other groups before and under the World War II. “In my subconscious, I can never get over the possibility that a six-tip star could be placed on my gate again at any time. It’s always in my mind. “

The Nazis killed about 6 million European Jews Under the Holocaust – Almost 10% of them from Hungarian territories. Estimated 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau, about 435,000 of them Hungarians, more than any other nationality.

Tamás Verő, a prominent rabbi in Budapest, lost many of his family members in the Holocaust. His grandmother, who returned alive from Auschwitz, once told him that she thanked God that he had become rabbi so he could make sure the genocide would never be forgotten.

“We carry our genes what our grandparents or our parents’ generation went through,” he told Associated Press. “I think that in order for us to observe Jewish holidays or to have Jewishness in our homes, what they experienced must remain a fresh memory and that memory must be part of our lives.”

At the outbreak of World War II, Hungary ended, then a kingdom, with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy to become an ally of the axis. Hungary’s leader, regent Miklós Horthy, pursued an irregentistic agenda trying to regain territories that Hungary had lost after World War I. Under Horthy, Hungary introduced Europe’s first anti-Jewish laws in 1920.

To believe that Nazi Germany could help restore the lost territories in what is today Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine, collaborated with Adolph Hitler throughout the war. Despite existing anti-Jewish laws, he opposed German demands to deport Hungary’s large Jewish population.

But in fear of Horthy, defect to join the Allies, Hitler ordered the invasion of Hungary in March 1944, and the mass portions began.

In less than two months between March and May of that year, approx. 435,000 Hungarian Jews, primarily from landscapes and villages, deported to Auschwitz in Poland, most of whom were sent to gas chambers upon their arrival. As the war approached, thousands of others were murdered by Hungary’s own fascist Arrow Cross Party, whose death tip shot Jews in a lot into the Danube River in Budapest.

On Monday, Verő, Rabbi and others gathered in the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest to observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Verő led participants, some of whom were the Holocaust -survivors, in a prayer. The center’s director, Dr. András Zima, called Auschwitz “the largest Hungarian mass grave.”

Verő believes that for Jews, preserving the memory of the Holocaust is a way to “commit to show the world that we learn from the events of the past, that we do not allow something similar to anyone else.”

But Léderer, who works as an artist from his home outside Budapest, said he believes that the Hungarian community “refuses to meet his past” and the Hungarian cooperation with the Nazis remains an unresolved mark on the country’s consciousness.

“It’s just a matter of time before we come to a moment when people think the time has come to hate someone again,” he said.