More than 1,000 Jews marched through Budapest’s Old Ghetto district in response to a series of anti-Semitic incidents and the polarized political climate in the run-up to Hungary’s elections next week.
The marchers defied a police recommendation to keep a low profile and marched through the neighborhood of the Great Dohány Street Synagogue wearing yarmulkes.
The police recommendation was issued last week, after the windows of Chabad Shliach Rabbi Shmuel Raskin‘s home had been smashed twice during a Passover Seder.
Over the last week, anti-Semitic graffiti has appeared in various places in Budapest, a Holocaust memorial was damaged in the western Hungarian city of Zalaegerszeg and neo-Nazis held an anti-Semitic rally in the eastern city of Tiszaeszlár, where a notorious blood libel against the local Jewish community led to pogroms in 1882-83.
Organized by the Hungarian Jewish community, the Budapest demonstration was secured by the police, and no violence was reported.
Jews in Hungary have repeatedly expressed concern about anti-Semitic overtones in the election campaign. The poll is set for 11 April, with a possible run-off on April 25, and the extreme-right Jobbik party is expected to score significant gains.
Jobbik is campaigning on a platform that blames most of Hungary’s woes on Roma (Gypsies) and Jews. In 2007 it also founded the now banned paramilitary Hungarian Guard.
(WJC.org)
That’s the spirit.
Low profile? Yeah, right!
Kol Hakavod Shmulik.
Zalman
very smart just awesome!!
people have to wake up, this sounds like something farmiliar…