Reminders of Hate : Jewish Groups Accuse Hungarian-Language Paper of Reviving Anti-Semitic Rhetoric of the Nazi Era

For Southern California’s small community of Hungarian-born Holocaust survivors, the little newspaper from Gardena triggers memories of another, faraway time, an age of intolerance when fascist thugs roamed the streets of Budapest.

Uj Vilag (New World), a Hungarian-language weekly, harangues against Hungary’s 80,000-strong Jewish population, blaming them for a host of ills in the Eastern European country. The articles have prompted complaints from at least two Jewish groups, which have denounced the newspaper as being blatantly anti-Semitic.

One recent article in Uj Vilag proclaimed, in Hungarian: “Not even one Hungarian should forget that we have suffered too much from the Jews already and we cannot permit a third Jewish domination (of Hungary).” Another writer had words of praise for Henry Ford’s 1920 virulent anti-Semitic tract, “The International Jew.”

Renee Firestone, a 59-year-old Hungarian native and survivor of a Nazi death camp, said the articles have awakened vivid memories of the Arrow Cross Party, the violent Hungarian fascist movement of the 1940s.

“It reminds me of how the Hungarians were thinking at that time,” Firestone said. “It’s very frightening.”

Uj Vilag’s publisher and editor is Victor K. Molnar, an affable 65-year-old naturalized Hungarian immigrant with chestnut hair and graying sideburns who runs the newspaper from a stucco storefront on South Vermont Avenue. The paper, with a circulation of 30,000, is distributed throughout the United States and in Hungary.

In two interviews last week, Molnar defended his newspaper and its editorial policies.

Although he denied that his newspaper is anti-Semitic, Molnar lashed out against the thousands of Jews who he said have returned to Hungary since the fall of Communism.

“The Hungarian people have reached their limit,” Molnar said. “Hungary has been sold out, factories have been closed down and there are all these entrepreneurs running around. . . . The biggest part are Jewish people who are wheeling and dealing and doing all sorts of things.”

The newspaper has been denounced by officials at the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who have written to Hungarian diplomats to complain about the publication.

“It’s quite clear they identify with some of the neo-fascist groups in Hungary,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center said. “They are working very hard to rekindle old hatreds.”

Cooper denounced a column in the June 25 edition of Uj Vilag, written by Dr. Balogh Barna, who is listed as the paper’s New York-based contributing editor. In one passage, Balogh wrote in Hungarian: “I have often wondered why there is so much murderous and lying nature in the Jew.”

In a letter to Molnar and Uj Vilag, Cooper wrote: “The anti-Semitic canards which you saw fit to publish are painfully reminiscent of the Nazi-sponsored press, which in the 1930s and ‘40s set the stage for mass murder of millions of men, women and children whose only ‘crime’ was their Jewish birth.”

One 77-year-old Holocaust survivor who lives in Los Angeles said he canceled his subscription to Uj Vilag a few years ago after the paper was sold and the editorial policy took a dramatic shift to the right. For some reason, he continues to receive the paper.

“I know very well the anti-Semitism in Hungary,” said the man, who asked that his name not be published. “My parents were deported to Auschwitz. Several many of my relatives perished there. Unfortunately, I see the same signs bubbling up again.”

Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany during World War II. After Adolf Hitler installed a fascist government in 1944, Jews were compelled to wear yellow stars and were robbed of their property. More than 550,000 Hungarian Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, many after being deported to concentration camps in Poland and Germany.

In an interview, Molnar denied any connection to fascist groups. He gave an often illogical and bizarre historical justification for the antagonism his writers express against the Jewish people.

Molnar said Jews had contributed to the domination of Hungary as agents of the secret police of the Communist Party. He argued that Jews made up 85% of the Communists’ secret police, along with most of its leadership, a contention that seems to have little basis in fact.

“It is a tremendous, big problem brought on us, the biggest,” Molnar said of the Jewish presence in Hungary. “Now they are increasing it by taking over organizations, schools, television and radio.”

Molnar also blamed the ills in his native country on prominent Hungarian-American figures such as Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame) and George Soro, one of Wall Street’s richest investors. Soro has created foundations that encourage private investment in Hungary.

Molnar said he is vehemently opposed to the current Hungarian government and supports conservative opposition groups in the country’s upcoming elections. He describes himself as a Hungarian nationalist--on the wall of his office in a map of “Greater Hungary,” with the nation’s boundaries expanded to include parts of Austria, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia and other nations.

Indeed, much of the rhetoric of Uj Vilag is directed against a variety of groups, including the Clinton Administration, the International Monetary Fund and Hungary’s large Gypsy population.

“It really spoils the atmosphere of the Hungarian community in the United States” said one Hungarian diplomat, who criticized Uj Vilag for its “rude and hateful” language.

David A. Lehrer, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League in Los Angeles, wrote to Uj Vilag, condemning highly inflammatory comments in a Jan. 1 book review.

Rabbi Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center noted that the newspaper has tax-exempt, nonprofit status as an organization dedicated to spreading cultural enlightenment. He said the Wiesenthal Center may seek to have that status revoked.

“These kinds of attacks, which may be par for the course for the radical right in Hungary, should have no place in this country,” Cooper said. “This is the kind of rhetoric that led past generations of Hungarians to murder their Jewish neighbors.”