The Association of Jewish Communities in Hungary expressed “serious reservations” on Monday at right-wing nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech last weekend. The Hungarian head of government has been criticized for speaking out against “miscegenation” in the speech.
Orbán had delivered a sensational speech in the Romanian spa town of Baile Tusnad on Saturday. “There is a world where the European peoples mix with newcomers from outside Europe. That’s a mixed race world,” he told his supporters.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the unscientific ideas about the existence of different human races were used by the Nazis, among others, as an argument for the persecution of the Jews. During World War II, about half a million Hungarian Jews were sent to the extermination camp in Auschwitz, Poland. Most of them died in the gas chambers.
The Hungarian Prime Minister also stated that countries where Europeans and non-Europeans mingle no longer form nations, but are a “conglomerate of peoples”. “We are not a mixed race. And we don’t want to be a mixed race,” he said.
The largest Jewish organization in Hungary is displeased with those statements. “Based on our historical experiences and the family stories that live with us, it is important to raise our voices,” the association of Jewish communities said in a response Monday. Andras Heisler, the organization’s president, also insists on meeting Orbán.
Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu has also called Orbán’s statements “unacceptable”. “It is regrettable that such ideas are being propagated from Romanian territory,” he says. “Obviously we can’t agree.”
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