The Nation Remembers Victims of Communism

Ötvenhatosok tere (Sztálin Square in 1953)

Tuesday’s parliamentary session began with commemorating the victims of communism. Later on, a memorial service was held at the Memorial of the National Martyrs and the House of Terror in Budapest.

Commemorating the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communism, the parliament’s chairman, István Jakab, stated that “The crimes of the communist dictatorship should neither be relativized nor should we keep silent about them; it is our historical responsibility to present this era as authentically as possible.” He added that what happened must be made known to the coming generations so that they can “clearly see the dangers that various forms of tyranny conceal.”

“Without a shared memory, there is no shared identity,” said Földváryné Réka Kiss, chairman of the Committee of National Remembrance at the Memorial of the National Martyrs in Budapest near the Parliament. She emphasized that the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Hungarians, who were mostly dragged to the Gulag labor camps without a court verdict, could be given a face through remembering their individual fates.

The trivializing retrospection of the heirs of the failed system must be noticed, because their perception persists to this day. Hence we must remember it even more. We are one nation and we belong together,”

said Gergely Gulyás, Minister of Prime Minister’s Office, at the House of Terror Museum. The minister recalled: “Andrássy út 60 was the house of the brown and red terror, the roads of dictatorship continue from here. The scale of the tragedy caused by communism is incomprehensible; human compassion cannot face so many deaths.”

Mária Schmidt, the Director General of the House of Terror Museum, stated, that February 25 is also a day of confrontation, because what the communists did was an evil act. Communism did not just come into being, but behind it was thought, intention, and the will of our fellow human beings. It was not the work of chance, but was consciously planned and organized, she pointed out.

The Director General stated that 35 years after the change of regime, close to the 70th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, we still do not know everything about the crimes of the communists.

It is an illusion that we are done with communism forever, because the communists are still here among us, they are hiding less and less, they are gathering strength, money, and political power,”

said Schmidt.

We do not wear Che Guevara T-shirts, and it is not a good thing to put up CCCP signs, and Lenin does not deserve admiration or a statue,” Schmidt continued. “We do not give an excuse to communism or communists,” she stated.

She added that the number of victims of communism could be in the hundreds of millions. “We bow our heads before the victims, when we look up, we face those who do not bow their heads and want to try communism again, maybe this time it will succeed. Glory to the heroes who stood up to communism and communists,” she concluded.

 

Via MTI; Featured picture: Fortepan / Nagy Gyula