A joint commemoration by the Association of Former Hungarian Political Prisoners and Forced Labourers in the Soviet Union (Szorakész) and the Gulag Memorial Committee was held in the Derkovits Gyula Elementary School in Budapest’s 6th district; between 1945 and 1948 the building served as the Soviet state security’s prison.

 

The Prime Minister said that the insane idea of National Socialism dragged the world into war; when a weakened Western world realised that its existence was at stake, it entered into alliance with another insane idea, international socialism: communism and its master. That was how the Soviet world broke into Europe.

 

Mr. Orbán said that “in exchange for its own security, the West finally offered a significant proportion of Europe’s freedom-loving nations to the Soviet Union on a plate”.

 

He said that “On behalf of the whole nation, we remember those who were wronged and persecuted, bow our heads before those who died, pay our respects to those who returned, and care for those who are still with us today”. The Prime Minister recalled that many hundreds of thousands of Hungarians from all over the Carpathian Basin – prisoners of war, civilians and political prisoners – were deported to Gulag camps, adding that of those deported between 1944 and 1948 only one fifth survived the hardships of the camps. All this was created by an insane idea born in Europe, he said.

 

“No one today disputes that, similar to National Socialism, communism was also an insane idea, and no one disputes the crimes of communism – but you know only too well what a long and difficult road it was to get this far”, Mr. Orbán said in reference to the fact that, throughout the two decades following the fall of communism, “the Left and Right carried their historical burdens separately”, and there was a debate on “whose burden was heavier”. It is time to close this period, he said, and this is why 2015 was declared the National Memorial Year of Political Prisoners and Forced Labourers Transported to the Soviet Union.

 

The Prime Minister also said that it was an uplifting feeling to finally be able to commemorate victims of communism freely. He added that it is important that, “especially now, when Europe is being attacked again”, that Hungary’s young people should know about the ideological perversions of the 20th century, and should grow up with the determination never to let this happen again.”

 

The Prime Minister concluded his speech with respect for heroes and tribute to victims.

 

Speaking about the venue for the commemoration, President of Szorakész Erzsébet Menczer said that huge injustices occurred within the prison’s walls after the Soviet occupation. These violated every human right, and collaborationist Hungarian communist authorities were also guilty.

 

“Even nursery school children know that at the end of the Second World War it was with the official cooperation of Hungarian authorities that individuals categorised as Jewish were rounded up, and that this must not be forgiven”, she said.  She called attention to the fact that “it was also with the cooperation of Hungarian authorities that Hungarian patriots regarded as suspected “class-aliens” were taken to the Soviet Union without court orders.

 

Survivors of the Gulag period were not allowed to talk about what had happened to them. The fact, however, that in 2012 the National Assembly declared 25 November to be the Memorial Day of Hungarian Political Prisoners and Forced Labourers Transported to the Soviet Union  fundamentally changed the situation. As a result, they can remember together with the representatives of the government and academia.

 

Mrs. Menczer also said that “we live in a Europe where our current allies – mostly those on the winning side in the Second World War – need to understand that human rights are not only violated when someone is taken to a death camp on account of their Jewish origin. Human rights are independent of origin. The death camps – with their barbed wire and high-voltage fences – which were set up in the Stalinist Soviet Union earlier than on the European continent were death camps just as much as the one in Auschwitz.” 

 

The President of Szorakész concluded her speech by pointing out that in spite of all this, the great success of the nation today is that “we live, we are here, we are dealing with the past and will not let this horrific thing happen again.”

 

Following the commemoration, the participants laid a wreath at the memorial plaque on wall of the school and started a commemorative procession to the House of Terror Museum.

 

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech delivered to mark the Memorial Day of Hungarian Political Prisoners and Forced Labourers Transported to the Soviet Union