PÁL TELEKI HUSHED UP

Conference about the falsified historical memory and about the European thought.

In Kossuth Club, Budapest even the foyer was full of the audience who wanted to listen to lectures organized by the adult edxucation centre in Lakitelek about Count Pál Teleki whose statue could not be erected in Budapest because of his alleged anti-Semitism. Count Teleki was twice Prime Minister and was a widely appreciated scholar, member of the Hungarian Academy of Science who committed suicide when Hungary joined the German forces occupying Yugoslavia in 1941.

Sándor Lezsák MP (Hungarian Democratic Forum), head of the Lakitelek Foundation said it was a clearly provokative gesture not to permit the erection of the statue while Péter Boross, former Prime Minister pointed to the fact that Mihály Károlyi or György Lukács had statues in Budapest while outstanding, positive historical figures like Pál Teleki, Kálmán and István Tisza or István Bethlen had not. Péter Boross said it was a falsification to say that Teleki ’paved the way’ to the holocaust as his and Horthy’s policy actually protected Hungarian Jews while in the neighbouring countries Jews were thrown quickly at the mercy of the Germans.

Bishop Endre Gyulay spoke about Pál Teleki, the confessor who lived a deep religious life and never hated anyone while Károly Vígh, historian underlined Teleki's’engaged anti-Nazism and his efforts to suppress Hungarian Nazi movements and parties. Teleki’s statute will be erected on Saturday in Balatonboglár where there is a Polish community, too, grateful to the Count who harboured thousands of Poles, among them Polish Jews, and even established for them a school in Balatonboglár.

Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó