Hungary commemorates Wallenberg half-heartedly

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was based in Hungary when he saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, but ahead of the 100th centenary of his birth, celebrations here are scarce while anti-Semitism is on the rise.

The Hungarian government has declared 2012 “Wallenberg Year” and the chairman of the committee organising the commemorations Zsolt Nemeth has said that “Hungary highly values and treasures the memory of the martyr Swedish diplomat.”

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 activities to commemorate the centenary.

Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi and his Swedish counterpart Carl Bildt opened the exhibit on January 17, and Zoltan Balog, minister for human resources and social affairs, was to attend another event on August 3, the eve of Wallenberg’s birthday.

The small ceremony at Budapest’s Holocaust museum will honour Hungarians who have been named “Righteous among the Nations,” the title awarded by Israel to those who helped Jews during the Holocaust.

But what has been more eye-catching lately has been the anti-Semitic incidents that have multiplied in Hungary in recent months.

A statue of Wallenberg in Budapest was sullied with pigs’ feet in May and another monument commemorating Holocaust victims was smeared that same week with graffiti boasting anti-Semitic slogans.

The authorities have 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, while slamming the authorities for “whitewashing” the past.

Israel’s Knesset also withdrew an invitation to parliamentary speaker Laszlo Kover to attend a ceremony in Israel this week honouring Wallenberg, after he paid tribute in May to an anti-Semitic writer who backed the Nazi-allied regime in Hungary during World War II.

“Wallenberg Year is going rather unnoticed in Hungary, with most of the population not even aware of who Wallenberg was,” historian and media expert Eszter Babarczy said.

“We’ll have to see how the media cover the anniversary, but I think it will be very modest,” she told AFP, crediting the government however for its efforts and for finding “the right words.”

Wallenberg was posted to Budapest in July 1944 and rescued thousands of Jews by issuing them protective passports in the final months of the Holocaust.

He was last seen alive on January 17, 1945 in the Hungarian capital, with various theories saying he was killed by Gestapo agents or died in a Soviet prison.

In 1957, the USSR released a document saying Wallenberg had been imprisoned in the Lubyanka, the notorious building where the KGB security services were headquartered, and that he died of heart failure on July 17, 1947.

But sceptics have questioned that version, with some saying he was executed. In 2000 the head of a Russian commission of investigation said Wallenberg was killed in the Lubyanka.