(Budapest) The International Auschwitz Committee said, on Tuesday, that it was “horrified” after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s statements against “mixed races”, and called on the European Union to “disassociate itself from such racist overtones.”
Posted at 7:57 AM
Updated at 12:05 PM.
The national leader’s rhetoric, “stupid and dangerous,” reminds Holocaust survivors of “dark times of their exclusion and persecution,” Christoph Heubner, the organization’s vice president, responded in a statement sent to AFP.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nahammer, who is hosting Mr Orban on an official visit to Vienna on Thursday, called for the distinction on behalf of the European Union. We must “make the world understand that Mr. Urban has no future in Europe”, whose values he “willfully denies”.
In a speech on Saturday in Romania’s Transylvania, where a large Hungarian community resides, the 59-year-old prime minister, known for his anti-immigrant policy, reiterated his rejection of a “multi-ethnic” society.
“We don’t want to be of mixed race” mixing with “non-Europeans,” he said.
Countries where “European and European peoples live with each other are no longer states. These countries are nothing but conglomerates of peoples,” said Victor Orbán, who made similar comments in the past, but without using the term “race”, according to experts.
‘Pure Nazi text’
He also apparently alluded to the gas chambers in criticizing Brussels’ plan to cut European gas demand by 15%. “I don’t see how they can force member states to do this, despite the presence of German know-how in this area, as the past has shown,” he said sarcastically.
Rarely under Urban, Zsuzsa Hegedus, his long-time advisor, sociologist, submitted his resignation on Tuesday.
In a message broadcast by local media, she denounced the “shameful position” and “pure Nazi text worthy of (Joseph) Goebbels,” a reference to the former head of Nazi Germany’s propaganda.
In response, Orban highlighted his government’s “zero tolerance policy when it comes to anti-Semitism and racism,” according to a published letter. He defended himself: “You can’t seriously accuse me of racism after 20 years of collaboration.”
The Hungarian Jewish community also rose up earlier this week. “Many different species inhabit our planet. On two legs, working, talking and sometimes thinking, only one species lives on this earth: Homo sapiens. “This race is one and indivisible,” Chief Rabbi Robert Frolich wrote on Facebook.
In the political class, Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu considered such “ideas” “unacceptable”.
As for the European Commission, it said, “Never comment on the comments of European politicians.”
“What is clear is that the EU has a certain number of values enshrined in treaties and implements policies related to these values and these treaty clauses,” EU spokesperson Eric Mammer welcomed, during the usual press conference.
