Rabbi Shmuel Raskin and his 50 guests were celebrating the Jewish festival of Passover last weekend when two stones smashed though the double-glazed windows of his home in the centre of Budapest. Police said they had probably been fired from a sling. The group continued with its ceremonies, but in silence and behind closed shutters. The incident was one of a series of hate attacks in Hungary amid an atmosphere of heightened racial tension in the run-up to today’s general election. During a recent speech by Gabor Demszky, the mayor of Budapest, a mob chanted “Jewish pigs” and “To the concentration camps”. Election posters have been smeared with yellow Stars of David and anti-Semitic slogans. Budapest rabbis describe racial epithets being shouted as they walk their children to school, slogans such as “Jews go to Israel” are daubed in the streets, accompanied by swastikas, while cars bear stickers with the slogan “Jew-free car”. Critics connect the abuse to the rise of the extreme right-wing Jobbik party, which has been accused of anti-Semitism and xenophobia. The increase in violent attacks on minorities — a dozen Roma (gypsies) have been gunned down in recent years — has coincided with the emergence of Jobbik, which won 15% support in the European elections held in 2009. Opinion polls suggest that it will attract between 13% and 20% today. Although the centre-right Fidesz opposition party of Viktor Orban, the former prime minister, is expected to win a landslide victory, Jobbik, led by Gabor Vona, a 31-year-old former history teacher, could become the second-largest party following a populist campaign dominated by attacks on corruption and “Roma crime”.
The party denies accusations of neo-Nazism but Gordon Bajnai, the caretaker prime minister, warned that the “monster” was at the door and threatening to “crush” Hungarian democracy. Jobbik is linked to a paramilitary blackshirt group, the Hungarian Guard, which was banned in 2008 but has resurfaced at election rallies. Robert Fröhlich, chief rabbi at the Dohany Street synagogue, said to be the largest in Europe, complained about Nazi salutes. “Insulting Jews on the street is nothing new here, but now it’s done more brazenly,” he said. The country has been hit hard by the recession and had to be bailed out by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Unemployment is above 11% and inflation is almost 6%. The rise of anti-Semitism has gone hand in hand with a renaissance of Jewish culture in Budapest as the old ghetto has been transformed into the city’s most vibrant district, filled with trendy shops, hotels, bars and galleries. Observers have suggested that the increased confidence and visibility of the Jewish population has created a backlash among other Hungarians. Adam Schonberger, a Jewish community leader, complained that successive governments had failed to tackle the issue of minorities in education and political debate. “The government must declare that Hungary is a country of mixed ethnic and cultural traditions and not a home to one single nation,” he said. More than 500,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust and 100,000 still live in the country. Between 8% and 10% of Hungary’s 10m inhabitants are Roma. Krisztian Szabados, head of the Political Capital Institute, a think thank, said racism had been “swept under the carpet” for decades. “Jobbik have simply delivered extremism to an electorate that demands it. No mainstream party has seriously tackled the antagonism towards minorities that has been here for decades.”
The Times Online
