Hungarian official retracts comparing George Soros to Hitler

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — After facing strong condemnation, a Hungarian commissioner on Sunday begrudgingly retracted an article comparing American-Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, a staunch critic of Hungary’s government, to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

“Europe is George Soros’ gas chamber,” Szilard Demeter, ministerial commissioner and head of the Petofi Literary Museum in Budapest, wrote in an opinion Saturday in the pro-government Origo media outlet. “Poison gas flows from the capsule of a multicultural open society, which is deadly to the European way of life.”

The comments drew outrage from Hungary’s Jewish community, including the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, which called the article “tasteless” and “unforgivable.”

“(It’s) a textbook case of the relativization of the Holocaust, and is therefore incompatible with the government’s claim of zero tolerance for anti-Semitism,” the group said.

In a statement Sunday on Origo, Demeter said he would retract his article “independently of what I think” and will delete his Facebook page.

“I will grant that those criticizing me are correct in saying that to call someone a Nazi is to relativize, and that making parallels with Nazis can inadvertently cause harm to the memory of the victims,” he said in a statement.

In the article, Demeter, who was appointed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to oversee cultural production, compared Soros to Hitler, writing he was “the liberal Führer, and his liber-Aryan army deifies him more than did Hitler’s own.”

Soros, who was born in Hungary and is a Holocaust survivor, is a frequent target of Orban’s government for his philanthropic activities that favor liberal causes. Government media campaigns targeting Soros have led to charges of anti-Semitism.

The article also noted the conflict over the European Union’s next budget, which Hungary and Poland are holding up over provisions that could block payments to countries that do not uphold democratic standards. Demeter referred to the two countries, both of which are under EU investigation for undermining judicial independence and media freedom, as “the new Jews.”

The government of Israel, a close ally of Hungary, condemned Demeter’s comments.

The Israeli Embassy in Budapest tweeted, “We utterly reject the use and abuse of the memory of the Holocaust for any purpose … There is no place for connecting the worst crime in human history, or its perpetrators, to any contemporary debate.”

Gordon Bajnai, a former Hungarian prime minister, wrote on Facebook on Sunday that if Demeter isn’t removed from his post by Monday, “Hungarians and the rest of the world will obviously consider (his) statement as the position of the Hungarian government.”

 

Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria on April 20, 1889 and died in Berlin, Germany on April 30, 1945. Adolf Hitler was the head of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. He originated fascist policies that administered to World    War II and the deaths of at least 11 million people, including the mass murder of an estimated 6 million Jews. Hitler killed people inside the concentration camps by starvation, worked to death, and torture. The conditions in the
camps led prisoners to die of diseases. Aside from the concentration camps Hitler set up six extermination
camps which killed, mainly with poison gas chambers. Hitler was raised with an authoritarian parenting style of his father. The He loved his mother deeply, but he feared his father. The authoritarian parenting style is characterized by
rigidity, obedience without questions, and physical punishment. Whenever his father would be become irritated he would immediately become violent. His father moreover had a drinking issue which Hitler was highly ashamed of. He was a troubled a disturbed adolescent and he usually found haven in an universe of fiction. Hitler’s typical personality traits were impulsive, egocentric, cold, aggressive, un-empathic, and tough-minded. Hitler’s nature which discloses that such characteristics are significative of an eminent level of Psychoticism. Psychoticism is is a personality model
typified by aggressiveness and interpersonal hostility. Eysenck a German-born psychologist theory establishes that when people with high level of Psychoticism are position under essence stress, the likeliness of developing psychosis increments. Psychosis is an mental illness in which impairs your emotion and actions. Including Hitler’s father’s authoritarian personality might have influenced him to become somewhat like him. He also displayed an extent of
personality disorders such as paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, and sadistic personality disorders. The assumption of Hitler having personality disorders were all base on the character traits he displayed as an adult. Psychologist also conjectured that Hitler could have suffered of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Psychotic Thinking, and Schizophrenia Paranoid Type. In conclusion Hitler may have had a vast majority of detrimental psychological disorders that could have influence his action to be so heinous and atrocious.