Budapest: A Budapest church has called off a memorial mass it was planning to hold in honour of a former Hungarian leader and Nazi ally on Saturday – International Holocaust Remembrance Day – after protests from Hungarian Jews and the World Jewish Congress.
Parliament’s deputy speaker who is member of the ruling Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, had been due to speak at the event called in memory of interwar Governor Miklos Horthy.
The planned ceremony for Horthy, an admiral who led Hungary for 24 years until 1944 and handed over hundreds of thousands of Jews to the Nazis, triggered strong objections from Jewish organisations.
With the WJC declaring it a provocative measure honouring an “unabashed anti-semite”, the Budapest church which had organised the Catholic ceremony, cancelled the event on Thursday.
Read the full article by Reuters at the Sydney Morning Herald.