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The Budapest Times, Hungary, Wednesday, March 14,
2007
Holocaust
denier guest
of honour Revisionist
historian to join the far-right on emotionally
charged national holiday NOTORIOUS revisionist historian David
Irving, who was released
last December [2006] from an Austrian jail
after serving 13 months for breaking that country's
laws on Holocaust
denial, is to speak in Budapest on Monday,
12 March. He is here at the invitation of his
Hungarian publishers, Gede Brothers, to promote the
Hungarian version of his latest work Nuremberg
- The Last Battle. Sándor Gede
told news agency MTI last Thursday that Irving
plans to attend book signings in several towns
around Hungary. MIÉP's
guest of honour The extreme nationalist Hungarian Justice and
Life Party (MIÉP) said on its website that
Irving will be guest of honour at its rally on
Hösök tere [Heroes' Square] on 15
March.  Photo:
Irving interviews Sándor Kopacsi, Budapest
police chief at the time of the Uprising, in
Toronto, March 1979
Irving famously published the
first major work by a western historian on the 1956
Hungarian Uprising that included interviews
with many protagonists. Although his work,
Uprising
- One Nation's Tragedy was well received in
some quarters upon publication in 1981, it has
since drawn criticism for its one-sided portrayal
of events. In particular, it presents the
revolution as an anti-Jewish reaction by the
population.  David
Irving comments: If I speak at Heroes' Square on March
15, 2007, I do so this time with
reluctance.
My Budapest publisher
accepted the invitation on my behalf, and
I have never failed an audience yet.
I believe that
historians should report events, not
create them, and I am aware that as a
foreigner I am particularly liable to be
misrepresented in the controlled
media. Incidentally, the media need to address
squarely, and not polemically, the
criticism that my well-known history of
the Uprising, published in 1981,
described the opening days of the
revolution as having all the
characteristics of an anti-Jewish
pogrom.
This was the conclusion
of the CIA analysts and of many (non
Jewish) historians in the USA and
elsewhere, and nobody can dispute the
large numbers of Jews among those publicly
executed by the revolutionaries -- secret
police officers and torturers -- and among
the refugees fleeing for their lives to
the Soviet Union and the west.
Academics and Hungarians
have hailed my book as the first true
account of events. The public certainly
perceived the Matyas Rakosi regime
and the subsequent communist regimes, and
their secret police agencies, as
disproportionately Jewish or Jewish
influenced, and this is a perception that
now seems to be recurring under Prime
Minister Gyurcsany. 
Irving
speaks to thousands at Heroes Square in
Budapest in October 2003 
Text
of Mr Irving's speech in October 2003
| photos
of that event
|
He precipitated a scandal during a previous visit
to Budapest in October 2003 when he came to promote
the new Hungarian language edition of the book. At
the invitation of party leader István
Csurka, he spoke at a rally on
Hõsök tere organised by
MIÉP. Another notable
speaker at the event was leader of the extreme
right-wing French National Front, Jean Marie Le
Pen.Flashpoint
before A subsequent edition of panel discussion
programme Éjjeli Menedék
(Night Shelter) on Hungarian Television (MTV) aired
an interview with Irving at the MIÉP rally
in which he characterised the first two days of the
1956 revolution as a popular anti-Jewish pogrom.
This Irving broadcast was cited as the last straw
that led to the right-leaning programme being taken
permanently off the air. MIÉP-led demonstrators took to the
streets in support of the Night Shelter
programme. Viktor Orbán, leader of
centre-right opposition party
FIDESZ commented "I find it
worrying that this is not the first occasion upon
which programmes supporting national civic or
Christian values have been attacked in this
atrocious way." Irving's return to Budapest, where he will give
a talk in the
Szabó Dezsõ Színház on
Szabadság tér at 6pm on 12 March,
comes at a time when issues of anti-Semitism and
xenophobia are once again colouring Hungarian
politics and the media. Jews advised
to stay at home Reuters reported last Thursday that
Péter Feldmájer, head of
Hungarian Jewish organisation Mazsihisz, is warning
Jews to stay away from 15 March celebrations. "We
are advising people, especially if they are elderly
not to go out," Feldmájer told Reuters. "If
you followed the events, they constantly blamed
Jews for all Hungary's problems with the harshest
words," he added, referring to the violent
anti-government demonstrations last year, in which
contingents of extreme right-wing organisations
were highly visible. Robert Hodgson  Donate
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Free download: Uprising
- One nation's struggle in several
languages-
Text
of Mr Irving's speech in October 2003 |
photos
of that event
-
Reviews
of David Irving, Uprising
-
András
Mink review article on secret Hungarian files on
David Irving's 1970s research visits to
Hungary
-
David
Irving's imprisonment in Austria 2005-6 |
prison
memoirs
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