Government officials paid their respects on the memorial day for the victims of communism on Saturday.
According to MTI, Speaker of Parliament László Kövér said the memorial day provides an occasion not only to pay respects to those who suffered, but to declare that “we will not allow our children and grandchildren to become victims of new poisoned ideas and new dictators”. He noted that Hungary’s periods under communism – for 133 days in 1919 and for over 40 years starting in 1947 – were both “funded with foreign money” and featured “networks of agents serving foreign interests”. Speaking at the House of Terror in Budapest, Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, stressed the importance of passing on personal stories to inform younger generations of what it’s like for “humanity to suffer inhumanity”, while learning to appreciate the value of freedom. At a commemoration in Pócspetri, in the northeast of the country, state secretary Miklós Soltész paid tribute to the victims of communism for paving the way for a period marked by peace, human dignity and freedom of conscience, for individuals and communities alike. At a memorial for forced labourers in the capital, state secretary Bence Rétvári said the communist ideal was an “ideal of murder”, as wherever communists came to power in the world, mass murders followed.