Event in which speakers lauded pro-Nazi wartime leader a ‘blatant attempt to glorify the perpetrators of the Holocaust’

File: Backdropped by the illuminated Chain Bridge, people light candles in front of the cast iron shoes at the Holocaust Memorial on the quay of the River Danube, during International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Budapest, Hungary, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. (Balazs Mohai/MTI via AP)
File: Backdropped by the illuminated Chain Bridge, people light candles in front of the cast iron shoes at the Holocaust Memorial on the quay of the River Danube, during International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Budapest, Hungary, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. (Balazs Mohai/MTI via AP)

 

DAPEST, Hungary — The Simon Wiesenthal Center has condemned a far-right commemoration in Hungary of a World War II battle in which speakers lauded a wartime pro-Nazi Hungarian leader.

A report on the feol.hu website said a Waffen-SS veteran who was scheduled to speak at Saturday’s memorial in the city of Szekesfehervar did not attend for health reasons. The Wiesenthal Center said the event was “another blatant attempt to honor and glorify the perpetrators of the Holocaust.”

Last year, international criticism caused a foundation to cancel plans to erect a statue in Szekesfehervar of a Holocaust-era minister who helped draft anti-Semitic laws.

The Wiesenthal Center’s Mark Weitzman said authorities’ failure to condemn the event, considering that Hungary is currently chairing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, was “an exercise in political and historical hypocrisy.”

As reported by The Times of Israel