Hungary's parliament and schools nationwide held the country's first
ever organised commemorations for Holocaust victims today, remembering the thousands who were deported to death camps from there.
Hungary sided with Hitler's Germany in World War II and its pro-Nazi authorities sent up to 600,000 Jews as well as thousands of gypsies to Nazi extermination camps.
"The dead of the Holocaust are our dead, the loss is our common loss and the mourning is our common mourning," said parliament speaker Mr Janos Ader at the ceremony, attended by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, government members, opposition party delegates and religious representatives.
Chief Rabbi Jozsef Schweitzer said the Hungarian government had put the Jews and gypsies "at the mercy" of the Nazi authorities, a move Mr Ader said had not corresponded "to the will of the majority".
Meanwhile, secondary schools across the country organized their own commemorative services, following a request from the education ministry. The government plans to hold annual commemorations every April 16th, the anniversary of the foundation of the first ghetto in Hungary in 1944. This year's ceremony was held a day later because of the Easter holiday.
Hungarian Jews welcomed the ceremony, but said that politicians should also be sure to clamp down on racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination in contemporary society.
The government should "pass laws that strictly and clearly punish any incitement against minorities and the denial of the Holocaust," said Mr Ferenc Olti, the vice president of the federation of Hungarian Jewish parishes.
Hungary has recently been under pressure over its treatment of gypsies after a group of Roma successfully claimed asylum in France, saying they had suffered persecution at home.
AFP