Hitler, Horthy and that monument

This evening, in brilliant sunshine, a further protest in Liberty Square against the building of the "Nazi" monument. As I walked towards the site, the sound of Jewish music blaring out across the park. The protestors had set up a van with loudspeakers and even from a distance the atmosphere seemed very good-natured. The protestors formed a human chain and marched round and round the site where the government has commisioned the building of a monument to the German occupation of Hungary. In the course of the hour or so I spent there, I noticed this man holding a historical photo of Adolf Hitler greeting the Hungarian regent Admiral Miklos Horthy during a visit in 1941. The thinking behind using this photograph is that it is evidence of the Hungarian alliance with the German government during the war. Opponents of the statue (which is to show an eagle i.e. Germany - attacking an angel i.e. Hungary ) say that such a monument is an insult to Jewish people in Hungary but also - and more importantly - a complete distortion of the historical reality. The fact is, they argue, that the Hungarian government contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews and this monument tells a historical lie. The prime minister doesn't see the symbolism of the statue that way at all of course but the more he seeks to explain his way out of the situation the more complicated it gets. There was a heavy police presence as there is every evening. I do not want to know what the policing costs have amounted to so far. Hungary is a country where statues have an incredible importance and they get damaged, moved or replaced very frequently. There were a number of prominent intellectuals in the crowd this evening, nearly all of them opponents of Viktor Orban. And then, later on, the national anthem sung with a deep sense of belief in a democratic country. It is an anthem which I love listening to though its lyrics leave a lot to be desired.