April 20th being Holocaust Memorial Day world-wide, it struck me as particularly sad that on the preceding weekend a gentleman, István Dósa, leader of a radical nationalist organization in Hungary, spoke before 200 supporters in front of the German Embassy and in essence stated that „nothing of the  Holocaust was true”. For a nation that had a 900,000 strong Jewish Hungarian population before the devastating events of the Holocaust, for such an event to occur in 2009 is hard to believe. On Monday, the actual day of memorial, the Hungarian education and cultural minister, István Hiller  asked deputies in Parliament to pass a bill to make denying the Holocaust punishable by law.

I, for one was flabbergasted. MTI reported that Hiller said a democratic duty is to condemn Holocaust denial. Perhaps I am not a politician, but  as I see it, it is an ethical and moral duty of humanity, particularly relevant to a nation such as Hungary that saw so few of its Jewish population return to their homeland. They perished at Auschwitz.  It is difficult for me to see Holocaust denial issues in a nation that lost so many of its prominent citizens simply because they were Jewish.           

Zsolt Patakfalvi (Canada)