Warning to Hungarian Jews was a “Purim joke”

Budapest, Hungary — A call by the leader of the Hungarian Jewish community for Jews to leave the country “for fear of anti-Semitic attacks on the occasion of the national holiday, “was a joke in a Jewish newspaper,” Rabbi Shlomo Köves said.

“Jews in Hungary are not afraid and you don’t have to take seriously what was mainly a Purim joke,” he said.

“This is totally far from the reality,” the rabbi of the Chabad community in Budapest, said.

Purim, which was celebrated last week, is the moste festive of the Jewish holidays commemorating a major victory over oppression.

Peter Feldmajer, head of Mazsihisz, one of the largest Jewish organisations, was quoted in the Jewish local newspaper Ujelet as saying Jews should stay at home or leave the country for their own safety on March 15, which marks the a national holiday .

“We are advising people, especially if they are elderly not to go out, to stay at home,” he said.

“If you followed the events, they constantly blamed Jews for all Hungary’s problems with the harshest words,” he added.

On March 15, the main parliamentary right-wing opposition Fidesz party and radical fringe groups plan anti-government rallies.

Several Jewish and Israeli media took Fedmajer’s warning seriously, saying that Jews were urged to leave the country for the upcoming Jewish holiday of Pessach or Passover.

Feldjmejer later admitted that this was a “joke” and said he wanted only to focus attention on this problem.

Hungary is home of around 100,000 Jews.

Violent anti-government protests in September and October last year featured flags associated with fascism, anti-Semitic chants and banners.

There were no recorded incidents of people being attacked because they were Jewish.

The extreme right was highly visible and vocal, even though it was a small part of the protests which came after Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted on a leaked tap he had lied about the economy to win last year’s general election.

Last week, Gyurcsany warned that anti-Semitism has escalated in Hungary since the demonstrations against his government.

In an interview with The Times newspaper, Gyurcsany accused Viktor Orban, leader of the main right wing opposition Fiesz party of exploiting anti-Semitism in an attempt to derail his government’s modernisation programme.

He also said the presence at rallies of a red-and-white striped flag, used during World War Two by the fascist Arrow Cross regime which shipped hundreds of thousands of Jews to gas chambers and killed tens of thousands more, showed Fidesz accepted anti-Semitism.

Fidesz denied the charges and challenged Gyurcsany in parliament to produce evidence that any of its MPs or senior officials were anti-Semitic.