Recently I came across an amazing photo.
It shows a brass plate that is fixed on a door. The door is (not visible on the photo) on a corridor of the 378 years old ELTE BTK University in Budapest.
Under the room’s number three names and positions are written on the paper behind the glass: the one of a main speaker, the one of a professor emerita (world famous) and the one of a professor emeritus.
Somebody glued a little piece of paper onto the top righthand corner of the glass. The paper reads: “Jews! The University is ours, not yours! Regards, the Hungarian students…”. This happened as a response to the students that were demonstrating against the government eliminating the constitutional court.
This little piece of paper is distributed all over the campus.
The ELTE University reported the case to the police. The culprits are unknown.
I leave the photo for a moment:
The Madách award is one of the most prestigious literature prizes any ruling Hungarian government can give. The idea behind the award is to inspire the people in the spirit of Imre Madách: “Every individual has the right to live a happy life regardless of his background, religion and political believes.”
Back in 2011 one of the awards was given to the writer and journalist Zsolt Bayer.
Bayer contributed sentences to the wide public in his main newspaper “Magyar Hírlap” like: “(…)the majority of the gypsies are not suitable for coexistence. They are not suitable to live amongst human beings. This part of the gypsies are animals and behave like animals. (…) And animals shall not exist.” He also described jews as “smelling excrements”.
On March 15, 2013 the government gave the Táncsics award (highest award for journalists) to Ferenc Szaniszló who described Roma as “man-sized apes” and regularly talks about “the jewish world conspiracy” in his TV show.
At the same day the government invested János Petrás, the lead-singer of the right-wing rock group Kárpátia, with the Golden Cross of Merit. Petrás is a well known homophobic revanchist who wrote the march for the “Hungarian Gárda”, which is the paramilitary organisation of the right wing party Jobbik.
József Nyírö and Albert Wass are two Hungarian authors. This year both of them became part of the national curriculum.
Wass was a war criminal of WWII, sentenced to death in absentia. Nyírö was a member of the Arrow Cross Party (the Hungarian Nazi party) and as such, member of the parliament in Hungary, 1944/45. He was loyal to Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Cross Party and “Leader of the Nation” until the last minute. Njírö fled to Franco’s Spain.
I return to the photo again:
Somebody glued a little piece of paper onto the top righthand corner of the name plate above. The paper reads: “Jews! The University is ours, not yours! Regards, the Hungarian students…”
This little piece of paper is distributed all over the campus.
The ELTE University reported the case to the police. The culprits are unknown.
However, there is one fingerprint on this little piece of paper that is visible even without a magnifying glass: it belongs to the current government.
Raise your voice!
1. Jul 2013