Prevention of Right-Wing Extremism, Xenophobia and Racism in ...

The Holocaust Memorial Center (www.hdke.hu) in Budapest was established in 2001. In an inin- dependent building of its own, the institution houses numerous exhibitions and programs. At
the same time, there has been fi erce conceptual debate on whether the most horrifi c genocide
of all times, the holocaust, is a purely Jewish cause. The resulting question being whether or
not the museum ought to display all acts against humanity and raise awareness in relation to
the Sudanese genocide as much as to the extermination of Armenians.
Social responsibility
There is no real tradition of assuming social responsibility in Hungary. Not counting the initiainitia- tives of a few civil organisations and private individuals, people tend to rely on the state to
provide solutions; and when, as usual, the political parties raise their voices they are often
inspired to do so by their own political interests.
On October 15th, 2004, 2004, on the sixtieth anniversary of the accession to power by the Ar- Ar-
row Cross Party, an unregistered group calling themselves the Hungarian Future Group held
a memorial service in front of the House of Terror. 36 On this day tens of thousands of people
marched down the same avenue in protest to demonstrate their anti-racists disposition. First
initiated by a few leftist parties, the movement later grew into a mass demonstration.
In February 2005 sculptor Gyula Pauer placed sixty authentic pairs of iron shoes on a
stretch of the bank of the Danube between Roosevelt Square and Kossuth Square. The shoes
commemorate the deaths of Jewish women and children shot dead by Arrow Cross members
on the bank of the Danube sixty years ago. In July somebody defaced the memorial by remov-
ing four iron shoes using a steel bar.
Pedagogical or social work approaches of prevention
Expansion of knowledge
Pursuant to a decree by the Ministry of Education, the 16th of April has been declared a
Ho lo caust Memorial Day. On this day all elementary and secondary schools throughout the
coun try devote devote some time to remembering remembering the victims of the holocaust. However, a single day
of commemoration is just not enough to make up for the defi ciencies in educating educating about the
holo caust. Students are insuffi ciently armoured to resist extremist ideologies in their every-
day lives. Although the constraints of this study do not allow us to expound on the underlying
cau ses of this, we can essentially blame the education system because schools run a rat race
to convey and check more and more information. No time is left for in-depth analysis, discus-
sions, or critically analysing certain historical events, happenings, or TV programmes.
36 The museum is designed to display crimes against humanity committed by both the fascist arrow and cross
regime and the communists. The museum is surrounded by a great deal of controversy because while the
terror of the Stalinist-Rákosi system is disproportionately overrepresented the few fi lms and pictures of the
Nazi era are included more to fulfi l an expectation than to maintain a balance.
106 Right-Wing Extremism in Hungary