Hungarian Chabad affiliate gains ownership of Budapest Holocaust Museum
The Hungarian government has invested some 22 million Euros in the
museum, the construction of which was finished some three years ago.
By Jeremy Sharon
The Chabad-affiliated Jewish federation in Hungary has been given
ownership and partial control over a nascent Holocaust museum in
Budapest by the Hungarian government, which has been the subject of a
long-running controversy within the local Jewish community.
The Hungarian government has invested some 22 million Euros in the
museum, the construction of which was finished some three years ago, and
announced a further six million euros to complete the museum.A
government resolution issued earlier this year transfers ownership of
the museum to the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation (EMIH), and a
joint press conference was held on Friday by a government minister, EMIH
head Rabbi Shlomo Köves and controversial historian Maria Schmidt, who
has served as the project’s head historian until now to announce the
development.Despite EMIH’s willingness to accept the ownership of the
museum, called the House of Fates, other elements in the Hungarian
Jewish community, particularly the old established Mazsihisz federation
of non-Orthodox communities, strongly opposed cooperation due to
Schmidt’s role.
The government resolution states that “the Government must decide and
implement the basic principles of the institution of the House of Fates
and its permanent and temporary exhibitions in historic, cultural and
museum developmental terms in cooperation with EMIH and the Public
Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and
Society.”
Schmidt heads the Public Foundation and has been in charge of developing
the permanent exhibition of the House of Fates while it was in
government hands, and will remain with the museum to complete it.
SCHMIDT’S POSITION within the project has prompted strong opposition to
Jewish communal participation with the House of Fates, due to her
promotion of a historical narrative equating Nazi crimes with those of
Communist regimes.This position is part of a phenomenon in Eastern
Europe which has been described as a false equivalence by countries in
the region to absolve themselves and their citizens of collaboration
with the Nazis by equating the Holocaust with Soviet and Communist
crimes.
Schmidt herself is the director of another museum, the House of Terrors,
which is supposed to be dedicated to highlighting the crimes of the
Nazis and Communists.
It has been criticized, however, for focusing overwhelmingly on those of
Communists and for portraying Hungary as a victim of the Nazis despite
having been an ally of Nazi Germany and collaborating with the Nazis in
deporting 424,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and participation in the
murder of another 140,000 Hungarian Jews.
According to Köves, however, the permanent exhibition of the House of
Fates presents a complete historical narrative which includes Hungarian
collaboration in the murder of Hungary’s Jews, including the drafting of
Jewish men into forced labor in which 40,000 of them died, forcing Jews
into ghettos and the deportations to Nazi death camps, including by the
Hungarian gendarmerie force.
Köves also points out that Schmidt will not be involved in the House of
Fates once the main exhibition is finished, and that EMIH will bring its
own experts in to further develop the museum and its educational
center.
The role of the Public Foundation headed by Schmidt in participating in
decisions on content of the permanent exihibition as stipulated in the
government resolution will be maintained, however.
“I am not surprised that there is a controversy over the opening of a
Holocaust museum. And even today, there are arguments about historical
narratives in museums like Yad Vashem, but this does not delegitimize
it,” he told The Jerusalem Post.
And Köves was critical of the opposition to the museum, saying that “the
Jewish community needs to take responsibility for being part of this
project” and take an “inclusive” approach to it.
He acknowledged that the EMIH would not have exclusive control over
content of the permanent exhibition, since the government resolution
says explicitly that the government and the Public Foundation must have a
role in the content, but notes that the EMIH will have an equal say and
that all sides will be able to reject content they find unsuitable.
According to Köves, the narrative of the museum will begin in 1938 with
the anti-Jewish laws of Hungarian ruler Miklós Horthy, and be told
through the eyes of some 50 to 60 Hungarian Jewish survivors of the
Holocaust who were interviewed for the exhibit.
BUT ANDRAS HEISLER, President of the Mazshihisz Federation of Jewish
Communities in Hungary of the Neolog community is deeply opposed to
cooperation with the government over the House of Fates.
Heisler says that the idea for the museum in general was positive and he
was initially on the museum’s International Advisory Board. But he said
that Schmidt refused to disclose the content of the permanent
exhibition and its narrative despite repeated requests.
He says that this led him and numerous others on the board, including
representatives of other Holocaust museums, to resign from the body,
saying that cooperating with Schmidt was not acceptable.
“To cooperate with Maria Schmidt, who has in the last three years issued
a lot of bad opinions on the Holocaust era and the responsibility of
Horthy and the Hungarian authorities, is not honest,” Heisler told the
Post.
“We cannot accept her as a Holocaust historian.”
He rejected accusations that the Mazshihisz Federation is reflexively
opposed to the current, right-wing nationalist government headed by
Prime Minister Victor Orban, saying that Mazshihisz has “positive
connections” with the government and that the federation has welcomed
the government’s support for its institutions and for religious freedom
issues, such as religious slaughter.
EFRAIM ZUROFF, a Holocaust scholar with the Simon Weisenthal Center,
concurred with Heisler that Schmidt’s role in the museum was “a very
problematic decision,” and labeled her “an arch Holocaust distorter.”
Zuroff said: “If Communism is genocide then Jews committed genocide
because there were Jews in the KGB,” referencing the prominence of Jews
in the Hungarian Communist Party.
He said that the next logical step of this claim is that if Jews
committed genocide they couldn’t complain against Hungarians for
collaborating against Jews.
The government is clearly cognizant of these claims, and a government
minister involved in overseeing the establishment of the museum
referenced them during the joint press conference.
“The fact that in Hungary the organized mass transportation of Jews to
death camps only occurred following the German occupation on 19 March
1944 does not mask the responsibility and guilt with relation to the
fact that following this, the state did not protect its citizens. There
is no collective guilt, but there is state responsibility,” said Gergely
Gulyas, the minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office.
Köves argued, however, that the concerns regarding Schmidt would not be
relevant once the House of Fates is formally handed over to EMIH, since
the government resolution requires government and Public Foundation
involvement only in “the basic principles of the institution,” and that
therefore the congregation would have control over temporary exhibitions
and the educational center, and that the other sides would not
intervene in the finer details of the museum.
“As a grandson of four Hungarian Holocaust survivors and as someone who
gave his life for serving the Jewish people, my only goal in taking part
in this project is to make sure that the commemoration of the Holocaust
will only be sincere and loyal to the memory of our predecessors,”
Köves said.
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