The U.S.’s special envoy against anti-Semitism, Ira Forman, has expressed ire at plans by a Hungarian city to erect a statue of a well-known wartime anti-Semitic politician.
Forman said in an interview with Reuters that putting up a statue of Balint Homan was “incomprehensible.”
Homan was Hungary’s Minister of Religion and Education during World War II and is considered the architect of laws that promoted the persecution of the country’s Jewish population in the 1930s and ’40s. His statue is an initiative of the privately run Balint Homan Foundation, which plans to install it in the city of Szekesfehervar, about 40 miles from the capital city Budapest.
“From the U.S. government perspective we feel very strongly that … the damage that this man did to Hungarian citizens who happened to be Jewish cannot be ignored,” said Forman, who attended a candle-lighting ceremony for the Jewish festival of Hannukkah on Sunday at the square where the statue will likely be erected.
“Honoring a man like that — we’re shocked by it,” he added.
[Reuters]
- What We Know So Far About the Deadly Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria
- Beyoncé's Album of the Year Snub Fits Into the Grammys' Long History of Overlooking Black Women
- How the U.S. Shot Down the Alleged Chinese Spy Balloon
- Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassment and Abuse, Women Say
- Inside Bolsonaro's Surreal New Life as a Florida Man—and MAGA Darling
- 'Return to Office' Plans Spell Trouble for Working Moms
- 8 Ways to Read More Books—and Why You Should
- Why Aren't Movies Sexy Anymore?
- How Logan Paul's Crypto Empire Fell Apart
