To Recall the Memory and the Unforgettable Tragedy of Our Roma Compatriots Who Became Victims of Nazism

Esteemed compatriots, We have gathered here today to remember. To remember and to pay our respects … To recall the memory and the unforgettable tragedy of our Roma compatriots who became victims of Nazism. We have gathered on the 70th anniversary of the ruthless extermination of the Roma deported to the Auschwitz death camp to condemn together those who vilely planned the genocide of WWII, as well as the cruel perpetrators, who didn't fear God or respect Man. We have gathered to reject together all forms and all manifestations of racial discrimination. We have gathered to express together that we have learned from one of the most painful lessons of European history and our own as well. We have gathered today to make it clear that when we remember the victims of the Roma Holocaust; we are not only remembering the memory of those who were sorrowed, humiliated and murdered in masses. We are not only remembering the children who were subjected to experiments and then sent to their deaths, not only the Roma families who were torn apart forever by the inferno of the Nazi death camps, not only the murdered or forever maimed mothers and fathers. We also owe it to ourselves to remember. Generations after us also have to know that all those who were discriminated, deported and incarcerated in lagers, who were tortured, persecuted or starved to death, who were executed or herded into the gas chambers of the death camps in the name of Hitler’s national-socialist ideology were all the same kind of people like we, who have gathered here today are. Distinguished commemorating guests, We all have to know that anybody could become a victim during those ominous times. Anybody, who based on the Nazi ideology did not have appropriate descent, did not have appropriate faith or appropriate political affiliations. Anybody who did not have an appropriate attitude to the Nazis and the Arrow Cross movement. History has taught us that all dictatorships first target personal freedoms and human dignity. Just as we have also learnt that restricting liberties, disregarding human dignity, advocating and applying the principle of collective guilt is capable of generating the most devastating type of tinder in history. The insanity of Hitler’s racial protection knew no boundaries. First they took away the civic liberties, then they withdrew the right to vote and then to marry Aryans, then a few years later the death sentence was passed on Jews and the Roma. They were the first selected victims in the process of creating the Aryan ‘lebensraum’. The Third Reich created a series of death factories across Europe in order to implement their industrial level extermination. However the responsibility for this genocide does not lie solely with Hitler’s Germany. The Nazi collaborators of European countries are also gravely and eternally culpable. We have to state that numerous representatives of the Hungarian State, cynical propagandists, thousands of Nazi-minded officials, the gendarmes and Arrow Cross soldiers of the Hungarian administration actively participated in the tragic persecution of Hungarian Jews and the Roma living in the country. Although segregating and deporting them was fundamentally a demand of Hitler’s Third Reich, we cannot disregard the fact that all this was perpetrated in Hungary by Hungarians. Paying our respects to the victims we have to state that the Hungarian State of the time has a grave responsibility in allowing all this to happen in our country. We have to say that the tragedy that followed the German occupation of our country is a shame of the Hungarian state of the time. Esteemed remembering crowd, Today is a one in a line of memorial days, which confront us with the unsurpassable shame of Hungarian and European history, the rise and the consequences of Nazism. All that is our share of this disgrace is what we Hungarians have to confront. We Hungarians also have to ask the question: … how could this have happened in our country? How could one Hungarian turn on another Hungarian? How could we go so far as to allow the Hungarian state to deprive hundreds of thousands of our Hungarian compatriots of the possibility of belonging to the nation? How could the representatives of the Hungarian state of the time act as servants of a foreign power and send their outlawed fellow citizens to the inferno of death? How could we Hungarians inflict such a deep wound on our own nation? We have the find the answers to our questions. The martyrdom of our fellow citizens cautions every benevolent and good intentioned Hungarian that this shame should have never ever been allowed to happen. Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear remembering crowd, The strength of our political nation grows if we respect the human and the Hungarian in each other. Exclusion makes us less; respect for each other makes us all richer. Indeed, the respect we show towards others could be the key that could open a door, in order for us to create a new world from the shame and the pain of our common past. Everybody deserves respect. The poorest and the most vulnerable ones also. Everybody who has the intent to act human and to be good. Everybody, who consider human life and freedom to be sacred and unquestionable values. Everybody who themselves respect the freedom, the rights and the human dignity of others. I sincerely wish that Hungarians of the 21st century should build their self-esteem on this respect. .

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