In Budapest, more than 10,000 Hungarians protested on Sunday against the extreme-right Jobbik party after Marton Gyöngyösi, one of its members of parliament, had called for a register of Jews to be drawn up. “This is a Nazi party,” said one protestor. “They are reviving notions that during the Second World War led to the murder of 600,000 Jews. So far nobody has raised their voice against his party doing this openly.”
Another explained why he had joined the protest: “I have come because eight members of my family were taken away by the Nazis and only four of them came home afterwards. I was a child, under six years old at the time and my mother had to raise me alone.”
During the rally scenes from a film about Jews being shot by Hungarian Nazis in 1944 were screened. Protesters held billboard-size portraits of Gyöngyösi with a Hitler mustache and “Heil Marci” wording underneath, referring to WWII-era German greeting. The rally was led by politicians from both the government and opposition parties.
Antal Rogan, the chairman of the parliamentary faction leader of the governing Fidesz party, told the crowd. “I came because in this situation I cannot stay quiet,” Rogan said. “Hungary defends its citizens.” Rogan said he is planning to take his two sons to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, where it is estimated that one-third of the Nazis’ victims were Hungarian. He added that “genocide is always preceded by lists,” arguing that it was unacceptable that “people should fail to learn the lessons of the past 100 years.”
Jobbik dismissed the protest march as “political alarmist”.
