Hungary commemorates Holocaust hero Wallenberg
Hungary paid tribute Friday to Swedish diplomat Raoul
Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews during World War II, in a modest
ceremony in Budapest's Holocaust museum marking 100 years since his birth.
"Evil must be rejected," Zoltan Balog, minister
for human resources and social affairs, said at the event in the city where
Wallenberg rescued Jews from the Nazi occupiers by issuing them protective
passports in the final months of the war.
"Those who knew how to confront hate and who saved
lives were perhaps unable to prevent the evil and the destruction, but their
memories should be cherished as strongly as possible," Balog said.
Budapest, where Wallenberg was posted in July 1944, was
also the city where he was last seen alive on January 17, 1945 as Soviet forces
ousted German and pro-Nazi Hungarian troops.
Mystery surrounds his fate but according to the official
Soviet account, he died in prison in Moscow in 1947.
The Hungarian government has declared 2012
"Wallenberg Year", but apart from a Swedish travelling exhibit called
"To me there's no other choice", which made a brief stop in Budapest
earlier this year, there have been few other activities.
Hungary has meanwhile seen a rise in anti-Semitic
incidents in recent months, including pig's feet left on a statue of Wallenberg
in May, and a Jewish graveyard was vandalised only last month.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban has meanwhile overseen a
rehabilitation of sorts for wartime leader Miklos Horthy, a one-time ally of
Hitler, with monuments erected in his honour and parks named after him.
The climate in Hungary prompted Nobel peace laureate and
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel in June to return the country's top honour,
slamming what he called the "whitewashing" of the past.
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