June 26th, 2012

Jewish groups call on government to remove alleged anti-Semitic writers from national curriculum (updated)

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Six Jewish organisations and federations have called on the government to revise the national curriculum and remove four “anti-Semitic” writers from it.

The writers in question, Jozsef Nyiro (1889-1953), Albert Wass (1908-1998), Istvan Sinka (1897-1969) and Dezso Szabo (1879-1945) spread “the contagion of anti-Semitism,” the organisations said in a statement.

“It is unacceptable that they constitute an integral part of the education of Hungarian youth,” the statement signed by Mazsihisz, the March of the Living Foundation, Mazsike, the Hungarian Zionist Alliance, the Victims of Nazism Committee and the B’nai B’rith Budapest Lodge said.

Nyiro remained loyal to the Hungarian Nazi Arrow Cross government up until the last minute,

They also protested against the recent involvement of Hungary’s Parliament in organising Nyiro’s reburial in Transylvania.

Wass proudly called himself an anti-Semite until his death while Sinka fomented anti-Jewish sentiment with his poems; Szabo laid the intellectual foundation of the public mood that led to the enactment of anti-Jewish laws in the interwar period, they said.

The six organisations called it “bewildering” that the national curriculum discusses the works of Imre Kertesz, Hungary’s sole Nobel-laureate writer, in the chapter on literary prizes, instead of the chapter on Hungarian literature, “casting them out of Hungarian literary history”.

Official says no revision of curriculum planned

The government has no plans to revise the recently approved new national curriculum, education state secretary Rozsa Hoffmann said on Tuesday.

Six Jewish organisations and federations have called on the government to revise the national curriculum and remove four “anti-Semitic” writers from it.

The writers in question, Jozsef Nyiro (1889-1953), Albert Wass (1908-1998), Istvan Sinka (1897-1969) and Dezso Szabo (1879-1945) spread “the contagion of anti-Semitism,” the organisations said in a statement sent to MTI on Monday.

Hoffmann said the criticised writers are not in the compulsory group of authors within the curriculum. Schools can freely decide to select other writers and therefore the organisations’ concerns are “not well-founded, “she added.

MTI (Magyar Távirati Iroda) is the Hungarian news agency.
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  • Géza

    ‘Six Jewish organisations and federations have called on the government to revise the national curriculum and remove four “anti-Semitic” writers from it.”

    So now the start to sensure hungarian society through calling on our government to remove hungarian writers.

    I am against any anti-etnic/cultural group, but not like this group everytime playing the biggest victim of history.
    These people really don’t know where to stop, this will backfire on them.

    And Imre Kertesz is not anti-semite, but anti-magyar, which is as bad. So those hypocrites show exactly who they are…

  • judgement day

    What a joke, let’s do some real justice by removing all the western and jewish propaganda we get bombarded with everyday…

  • Pete H.

    There are plenty of other Hungarian writers that are not blatantly bigoted. Hungarian youth are not being done any favors by being exposed to this garbage in a state sanctioned setting.

    With the rapid growth of antisemitism HUngary over the last five years, the Hungarian governments moving in the opposite direction they should be. Fidesz and Jobbick are shaming Hungary by this type of action.

    • Leto. مؤدّب

      “here are plenty of other Hungarian writers that are not blatantly bigoted. ”

      Indeed. Kertész Ákos, Eszterházy Péter, Konrád György, Kornis Mihály, Spíró György , Parti Nagy Lajos come to mind. They are all bigoted anti-Hungarian sh**heads. Less tolerant nations may have lynched these bastards for a couple things they dared to write.

  • Leto. مؤدّب

    I don’t think Imre Kertesz will have a prominent place in Hungarian literary history. He’s a mediocre, third-rate writer.
    It’s not his literary skills and certainly it’s not his contribution to Hungarian literature what made his name and earned him that Nobel Prize.

  • judas

    Dear Leto,

    it is exactly your kind of comments about hungarian
    writers “s…heads” which makes one wonder what on earth
    is your vision of hungary? back to where?

    • Leto. مؤدّب

      Dear judas,

      What is your problem exactly with my calling these particular persons this way?

      Do you live in Israel, don’t you? So I’m wondering what you think how people would react in Israel if a Hungarian gentile writer moved there, he’d get Israeli citizenship (is that possible at all?) and then he’d publicly insist that J*ws are genetically inferior?
      Make your best to be honest when you’d answer…

      • Leto. مؤدّب

        Correction: “Do your best”

        (Damn, my English is degrading… confusing “make” and “do” is a typical grammar mistake of native Hungarian speakers)

      • Leto. مؤدّب

        To judas’ attention…

  • Vidra

    In my record collection I have stuff by a convicted pedophile, at least one wife-beater, numerous drug addicts, alcoholics and homosexuals and probably some who would vote Jobbik. Some are doubtless semi-literate morons and others you wouldn’t want to spend more than two minutes in the same room with. It doesn’t matter because I judge them on the music they’ve made.

    The Education Ministry should likewise have a duty to judge authors on the basis of literary merit and not according to their politics. Whoever demanded these writers should be on the curriculum should be required to teach them in their local schools, with a forfeit of (say) one now politically “unacceptable” writer to replace their pin-up boys for each time they fail to instil the required values into a bunch of bored and cynical teenagers.

    • Leto. مؤدّب

      Good point.
      Say, no matter what political views Jozsef Nyirő held, his writings are great. (Besides you cannot trace his political views in these.)
      These “J*wish groups” don’t give a damn. Nyirő was a member of the Arrow Cross parliament -> his works must be blacklisted. (Seeing their vehemence, they’d even prefer to burn his books.)

    • Stefan

      There’s nothing wrong with you, Orban or his gang listening to Gary Glitter or even Charles Manson (his “Angels Fear To Tread” could have been a Johnny Cash song). What would be awkward is to see Glitter and Manson on the UK/US national curriculum.

      • Leto. مؤدّب

        Do you think it’s awkward to see Thomas Jefferson on the US national curriculum?

        -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery

        • Pete H.

          You could not have come up with a poorer example. Jefferson last act was to free his slaves. He also introduced legislation to end slavery by gradual emancipation. His ideas regarding liberty were the seed for the eventual end of slavery in the US. Nyirő never disavowed his fascist past.

          Historical context does matter. We expect more of persons living in the 20th century than those who lived in the 1700′s. Jefferson was forward thinking for his era. Nyirő’s ideology was regressive.

          My issue with the addition of fascist and antisemitic writers to the curriculum is how they will be taught – they will not be taught in a critical and reflective context, but rather in a uncritical perspective.

          • Leto. مؤدّب

            Chances are you consider Stalin’s ideology progressive for Nyirő’s era.

            And once again, Nyírő’s literary merit is a completely separate issue from his political views. Keep whining.

          • Pete H.

            Yeah right Leto. What a lame retort. I come from a family that fled from communism.

            And if his literary and political merits are separate, then how do you reconcile the Hungarian government’s making him a political issue by rising him to the level of a national hero? Are you willing to criticize Fidesz for confounding the two issues?

            It would be one thing to treat his work as something of merit (debatable) and understand his flawed ideology. It is another matter entirely to treat him with the honor of a reburial ceremony attended by the Speaker of the Parliament.

      • Vidra

        Depends on the age of the kids and the competence of the teachers. Better they learn about these things when they are old enough and in the moderating influence of a classroom rather than through some biased and highly selective website and before they’ve developed some kind of critical filters.

  • Ma Jar

    At the same time ban anti-Christian writers.

    • Vidra

      “Ban nothing, question everything.” But such a philosophy is completely UnHungarian, isn’t it?

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