Germans Have Contributed to Building a Shared Homeland

The Germans are respected everywhere in the world, the State Secretary heading the Prime Minister’s Office said in Törökbálint, East of Budapest, on Saturday.

Speaking at a commemoration organized by the German Municipality of Törökbálint on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the deportation of the Swabian community, János Nagy said he was proud to speak on behalf of the political community that in 2012 enacted a law commemorating the deportation and expulsion of Germans in Hungary. He said

it was fitting and appropriate to thank Germans in Hungary for all they had contributed to Hungarian culture, Hungarian science and the building of our common homeland.

János Nagy said that the ideologies that set off the “shame transports” of the 20th century and filled the roads of Europe with people carrying their bags, displaced, running for their lives and humiliated, were not born here in Törökbálint. “These ideologies have invaded our lives from the West and the East,” he added. According to these, history has a good side and a bad side, and the bad, sinful side is the side where entire peoples, millions of innocent people, can be pushed out, expelled, destroyed, because of the sins of a few,” he added.

He pointed out that Europe had already succumbed to this mad logic on many occasions and that those who were thus on the guilty side were allowed to do anything. They could be deprived of their property, their land, their homes, their symbols, their citizenship, in short, their homeland, he added. The State Secretary said that even today there is a good and a bad side of history, collectively declared guilty. “Today, languages are still banned, statues are taken down, lectures are cancelled, books are smashed”, a clear allusion to the oppressive language an minority legislation recently enacted in Ukraine.

“There is also no doubt that a Swabian farmer in Törökbálint had as much to do with the battle of Stalingrad as a Russian athlete had to do with the fighting in Donbass,” he said.

The everlasting lesson of the events of 77 years ago is that a crimes cannot be made good by further crimes,

János Nagy underlined. The State Secretary said that the peoples of Central Europe have been bound together for centuries by the commandment of coexistence, a law for which Hungary and its national government stand wholeheartedly. This is what we are striving for with the nationalities living within our borders, as well as with the other peoples living in the region, but also with Hungarians living abroad.

He added that no one can talk about belonging to Europe until minorities are accepted, recognized and supported. János Nagy said that only those countries that are masters of their own destiny can comply with the imperative of coexistence. He added that only a free and independent Hungary can create the conditions for coexistence and only a free and independent Hungary can defend it. Only that which we can defend is ours,” the State Secretary, who heads the Prime Minister’s Office, added.

Featured Photo: MTI/Lakatos Péter