– Taking on the past, including my personal past, I bow my head to all the victims of the Holocaust – said the 444 according to his report President of the Republic Tamás Sulyok in the Parliament on the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust in Hungary. The “committed past” is his father’s involvement in the persecution of Jews in Hungary. László Sulyok – as it turned out from the research of several historians – was a Nazi sympathizer and the leader of the Hungarian National Socialist Party in Fejér county, who celebrated the German occupation of Hungary in a newspaper article: “we finally got some air”, and following the deportations started, he demanded an apartment from the mayor of Székesfehérvár and “Jewish furniture”. , i.e. the properties and movables of the abducted victims, so that there is something to furnish the party office.
– I consider the accusations made regarding my father to be a sexual attack. It is an undignified situation which, since it is regarding my family, causes serious pain. I can say that before the regime change, as for most Hungarians, the past was taboo in our family as well – Tamás Sulyok told Mandiner. The interview was published on March 8, three days following taking office, and according to the text, the head of state categorically denied the accusations. According to his claim, his father was a “socially sensitive, patriotic, philo-Semitic person”, so it is inconceivable that he would have written an article with a Nazi tone in 1944.
Sulyok made a statement to the Krónika in Cluj-Napoca while still president of the Constitutional Court, claiming that his father was sentenced to death in absentia by the people’s court in 1946, mainly because he took on the case of a woman whose husband later became party secretary of the city as a divorce lawyer in Székesfehérvár. In response to this, historian László Karsai appeared on hvg360 on March 1 wrote in his article, that the President of the Republic claims untruths. According to Karsai, László Sulyok was a simple anti-Semitic lawyer, and the head of state either doesn’t know his father’s story very well or is “knowingly lying”.
After Karsai, Krisztián Ungváry is a historian at Telex published opinion article About Tamás Sulyok’s father. According to him, “there would be no need for these lies if Sulyok did not try to portray himself and his father as victims of communism.” In his article, Ungváry emphasizes that “of course, no one is responsible for the actions of their ancestors. However, you can’t help spreading false claims regarding them. In particular, a person who is first the guardian of Hungarian constitutionalism and then the holder of the most important public law function expressing the unity of the nation cannot do this.”
According to Tamás Sulyok, he knew that his father was a good man who would not have harmed a fly, let alone his Jewish compatriots. When the historical research came to light, he protested vehemently, ultimately framing the facts as a personal attack. He might not accuse Karsai of lying, because the historian supported his claims, and in addition, following his article, additional incriminating evidence came to light – courtesy of historian Anna Gergely. At that point, the head of state, or more precisely, the state propaganda plant that manages him, changed strategy: following denial and accusations, silence followed. Katalin Novák didn’t like this, there was much more indignation there, but it might work in Sulyk. After all, it’s not a big deal: he didn’t tell the truth regarding his father, it happens to even the best, doesn’t it?
And Rogán’s calculation worked this time: it did not become a national scandal that following Novák was pardoned in the pedophile case, a man who tried to divert attention from the Nazi sympathizer’s father with untruths became the president of the republic.
But there was another absurd twist to the story. In order to save what might be saved, Tamás Sulyok continued to weave the family legend: he included the smallholder politician Dezső Sulyok in his family (according to his claim, he was his grandfather’s brother). After a while, however, it turned out that, unfortunately, this is not true either. The large-format former parliamentarian is only a namesake.
After all this, the head of state considered the memorial day of the Hungarian Holocaust victims on April 16 to be the most fortunate opportunity to repent of his sins and “accept his past”. Few might have chosen a more tasteless gesture. Eighty years following the ghettoization and subsequent deportation of Jews began in Hungary, Tamás Sulyok bravely faced his family’s history.
So in order:
1. for the first time, he proudly told regarding his father, who was persecuted by the communists
2. following it turned out that it wasn’t quite like that, he referred to “undesirable attacks”.
3. when the defense would have been unacceptable, he remained silent
4. but in the meantime he invented a non-existent family line for himself, just to have a decent person among his ancestors
5. finally, on the day when facing the past honestly is perhaps more important than anything else, he admitted that he had been obfuscating, misleading or simply lying for the past few weeks.
The question is no longer what Tamás Sulyok’s father did, but what László Sulyok’s son did? Let’s say that he really didn’t know regarding his father’s past, does that justify the ridiculous defense that has defined his job as head of state so far? And there is a more serious question: what does the fact that the president had no idea that his father saw the saviors of the country in the Nazis tell us regarding the Hungarian state and its leader? Could there be a more obvious sign of the postponement of confronting the past?
Tamás Sulyok is not worthy of the post of president of the republic. We might not doubt this until now, but today’s speech made it clear once and for all. He would have had a month and a half to make an honest confession and apologize, but instead – following a few tediously familiar tricks – he finally chose the victims’ memorial day as the main drive, and thus unmistakably referred the discourse to the political space. This is not regarding his father, even less regarding the victims, it is only regarding compensation, it is a simple marketing ploy with which they tried to save what can still be saved. With this decision, Tamás Sulyok spit in the face of all Hungarians currently alive, but what is even worse is that he dragged away in 1944 and murdered our compatriots in the Nazi fish factory in the same way.
We can only preserve their memory in one way, if we honestly face all the horrors that the Hungarian state and a considerable number of its citizens once committed. Today, a person is at the head of the state who has proven to be incapable of this. And to make the situation even more unpleasant, he only “accepted his past” when his toolbox of political side talk was empty.
After Pál Schmitt and Katalin Novák, another president of the republic proved to be morally incompatible with his position. I hope the next head of state will be properly trained.
