Jews in Budapest want to continue living as Hungarians.
According to the International Herald Tribune both
religious and assimilated Jews have been suffering from
various forms of persecution. A shattered glass front of an
ad agency in the Jewish quarter serves as a grim reminder of
the doubled rate of cultural and political antisemitism.
Young Hungarian nationalists react violently to every Jewish
cultural event, particularly if it's related to the
Holocaust. These groups harbor nostalgia for the old days
when their country was a Nazi ally.
The ad agency itself doesn't belong to Jews, but is located
in the Jewish quarter and refused to sell tickets to a
fascist concert. The next day the windows were smashed.
During the course of several days last month fascist youths
gathered outside the agency to protest. One thousand
extremists faced off against 3,000 counter-demonstrators led
by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany.
Local Jews say that the more Jewish culture returns to the
streets the greater the antisemitic reaction. Recently an
exhibition of Holocaust artwork, for instance, stirred
protest demonstrations.
A French government official who heard about a campaign to
preserve the old Jewish ghetto in the 13th Quarter and
started a petition against construction work found himself
assailed by an antisemitic reaction. "The ghetto belongs to
Hungary's past and not just to the Jews who abandoned the
quarter," read a piece in a literary journal. According to
the Hungarian committee set up to preserve the quarter the
dispute has nothing to do with antisemitism.
Among the developers who apply pressure to raze the Jewish
Quarter are Israelis as well. Janos Ladanyi of the Committee
for the Protection of the Ghetto said that Jews who appear
religious don't encounter problems. "In Hungary it is all
right today if you behave as a religious Jew. The Ghetto is
fine for that reason. It's a distinct historical entity. But
what is now being denied here is the notion that Jews, no
matter how we behave, are the same as non-Jews. The problem
comes when we say we are like them," Ladanyi told a New
York Times reporter.
But a Jew named Gabor Zoltan, who wears a yarmulke and
sometimes serves as a tour guide for visitors at Budapest's
old shul, said he was openly mocked on the street for wearing
a yarmulke.
A well-known professor in the capital, who sometimes appears
on television, said not long ago a car stopped at a crosswalk
and the driver called out, "Ordinarily I'd run over a Jew,
but because I recognized you I stopped."
Hungarian historian Tibor Frank said antisemitism is part of
Hungarian youth's reexamination of their nation's history and
they identify Jews with the communist regime, which had many
Jewish leaders.
