You are here: 2000 / Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches / Plenary Session 1 / Message by the President of Hungary, H.E. Árpád Göncz
	Participants Countries and organizations Conference documentation Conference programme				Message by the President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga Message by the President of Slovenia, Milan Kucan Message by the President of Argentina, Fernando de la Rúa Speech by Professor Hubert G. Locke Message by the President of Bulgaria, Peter Stoyanov Message by the President of Slovakia, Rudolf Schuster Message by the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Victor Yushchenko Message by the Prime Minister of Lithuania, Andrius Kubilius Message by the Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of Russia, Valentina I. Matvienko Message by the Federal Councillor, Head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs of Switzerland, Ruth Dreifuss Message by the President of Hungary, H.E. Árpád Göncz Message by the President of Hungary, H.E. Árpád Göncz Stumpf, István Message by the President of the Republic of Hungary, Delivered by the Minister of the President's Chancellary, Mr István Stumpf Mr/Madam Chairman, Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my honour to greet the participants of this International Forum on behalf of the Hungarian Government. It is my special privilege to convey to you the personal good wishes of Mr Arpad Göncz, President of the Republic of Hungary. It is fifty-five years ago that the darkest chapter of European history and the most tragic period of the history of the Jewish people came to an end. Four hundred and forty thousand Jewish people of rural Hungary had been delivered to the Auschwitz extermination camp, most of them to be murdered immediately upon arrival. To complete this satanic job, the Nazis decided to wipe out the Jewish community of Budapest, too, the largest in Central Europe, as the Red Army was closing in on the Hungarian capital. Five hundred SS men and their Hungarian auxiliaries stood ready to turn the Budapest Ghetto into a graveyard. But at the critical moment a handful of dedicated Hungarians succeeded in averting – at least in part – the impending disaster. Days later the Ghetto was liberated by advancing Russian troops. Those who survived did owe their lives to many known and unknown heroes who hid and concealed the persecuted, forged documents of false identities, or joined the international effort to save as many souls as possible. At the centre of this huge noble undertaking stood the young Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, and his associates, as well as other diplomats of neutral states active at the time in Budapest. The "visas for life" Wallenberg issued helped over ten thousand people to obtain a degree of relative security. Wallenberg`s undertaking, and that of thousands of known and unknown heroes, remain a legend of unparalleled human sacrifice in the midst of unspeakable human evil and cruelty. We in Hungary deem it our duty to face our past, however difficult this may prove. The sense of grief that permeates us over the tragic loss of some half a million of our compatriots, is what makes it our moral obligation to perform our duty to the memory of our martyrs. Not until we can fully assert that the lesson has been learned, the conclusions drawn, their memory enshrined in our collective conscience and the survivors compensated as fully as possible, can we say that this has been achieved. Our consecutive democratic governments have done, in the course of the last ten years, all they possibly could to fulfil this pledge imposed on ourselves by our conscience. The achievements are convincing. Racial incitement of any sort is strictly punished by law in Hungary. Incitement against national and ethnic minorities is prosecuted under Hungarian law, which also makes provisions for acts that create ill feelings against Jewish people by public denial of the Holocaust. Teaching about the Holocaust and its consequences is an integral part of the school curriculum on all levels of the Hungarian educational system. Education is one of the most important means to fight ignorance and hatred. Therefore we have declared 16 th [the sixteenth] of April, the day of commemoration of the Holocaust. This means that every year on the 16 th April all schools will remember the tragedy and the message that the Holocaust signals to us. Much is done to encourage Jewish cultural revival. The conclusion of an agreement between the state and the main representative body of Jewish Hungarians has resulted in the restitution of real estate property confiscated during the Holocaust and subsequently never returned. A fund to compensate for the looted artefacts has been likewise set up. The Jewish community was offered regular financial assistance by the government to promote religious and communal activity. Indemnification on a personal basis has also been initiated. Hungary tried, even during our difficult times of restructuring, to make up for all the shortcomings of the past decades in healing the wounds of her Jewish citizens. The Hungarian government contributed large sums to the restoration of the Central Synagogue, the largest functioning synagogue in Europe. Just recently, our government has pledged to finance an ambitious programme to set up a National Holocaust Museum. Under that project, there will be a permanent Holocaust Memorial Exhibition in Budapest as soon as the reconstruction of the building, the Páva utca synagogue is completed. Ladies and Gentlemen, We find a degree of comfort in the dateline we have just crossed, separating ourselves in time from a century we all remember with great unease. Never has humanity suffered so much and on such a grand scale. Never has human evil devised such torment and debasement for fellow humans. But the past century was also one of hope, a hope of peace and a better future. The memory of the Holocaust victims should constantly remind us of the value human life and dignity must be given in a new era meant to be promising for the entire human race. Let this conference, on the dawn of the new millennium, dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust, be the initiator of our great collective work. Let us embark on an enterprise that aims to relegate racism to the confines of history. Let the better half, and I say with confidence, the great majority of mankind, adopt a creed of relentless work to eliminate ideas that mean to draw dividing lines between humans on the basis of colour, race or sex. When this we achieve, when we effectively uproot incitement, hatred, and banish discrimination from our new global civilisation, only then the martyrdom of the six million has been paid tribute to in deeds, not just words. >> Back to top				Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Plenary Session 1 Plenary Session 2 Reception at the Stockholm City Hall Written Messages Workshops, Panels and Seminars Closing Session and Declaration Other Activities
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