75th Anniversary of the Budapest Ghetto

"The tragedy of our Jewish compatriots is the tragedy of all of us, the darkest period of Hungarian history," Péter Niedermüller, Mayor of Erzsébetváros (Budapest’s District 7), said at a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Pest Ghetto in Budapest on Thursday, the Hungarian news agency MTI reports.

At the commemoration of the local government in Klauzál Square, located in the area of the former ghetto district, the mayor pointed out that “it is not enough to remember silently, we have to say out loud what happened in the winter of 1944-45 in Budapest.”

It has to be said that on Klauzál Square, where children now play, thousands of people lost their lives in indescribable circumstances. It has to be said that "this square is not simply a square in Budapest, but a square of death, destruction and inhumanity," he stated.

Péter Niedermüller emphasized that “we must also tell our children and grandchildren that hatred and hate, stigmatization and exclusion of another person, trampling on human dignity, the runaway feelings, producing enemy images, xenophobia may have unforeseeable consequences, as it happened in the winter of 1944-45 in Budapest.”

A society, a democracy, is first and foremost characterized by the way it treats minorities, dissidents and otherness, the mayor said, adding that a nation is not a myth of uniformity, not of "one blood," but rather of diversity - and respect for diversity makes it great and strong.