Hungarian politician Csanád Szegedi, who resigned last month from the ultra-nationalist Jobbik Party after discovering his Jewish roots, apologized for his past anti-Semitic statements, telling Rabbi Shlomo Koves that he is not ashamed of his newfound identity.
Szegedi, who as a Jobbik legislator was a member of the country’s third-largest political party, learned that his maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors who decided to keep their identities secret after World War II. His grandmother was imprisoned at Auschwitz, a fact which led the politician to indicate to Koves that he wanted to visit the site where more than 1 million Jews were exterminated by Nazi forces between 1940 and 1945.
The revelation comes just months after another Jobbik legislator endorsed a long-since discredited blood libel against the Jewish people from the podium of the Hungarian Parliament. That led Koves, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary who serves as director of the Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation, to warn of the rise of anti-Semitism in a country that is home to more than 100,000 Jews.
When Szegedi recently called for a meeting, Koves “was stunned,” according to daily newspaper Nepszabadsag.
“As a rabbi, it is my duty to receive anybody requesting spiritual advice or seeking information about Judaism,” said Koves, spiritual leader of the Obuda Synagogue and chief rabbi of Hungary’s army. “The Jewish religion teaches that each person has free will, and may at any time repent for past actions. Repentance is a long and difficult process with many spiritual, human and social ramifications.”
Szegedi, 29, said that he specifically sought out Koves’ advice because the rabbi’s grandparents also kept their Jewish identity secret for many years.
“In certain aspects, we share the same fate. His grandparents also kept their identity as a secret for a long time. There is no generation gap between us. I felt that this will make it easier for us to talk,” Szegedi told the website of the HVG economic and political magazine.
“As a politician I always felt it important to have a common language. Now that I have been faced with my Jewish roots, that I do not regret at all, keeping in touch with the leaders of the Hungarian Jewish community has become especially important for me.”
Koves is hopeful for Szegedi’s future.
“I wish for him that he should be able to correct his past,” said Koves. “He can do that best, if, apart from getting to know his own roots, he does everything in his power to keep others from being led astray.”
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