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On the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Totalitarian Dictatorships, Mária Schmidt, Director-General of the House of Terror Museum, said that those who today erect statues to Marx and Lenin want to make themselves the victors and us the losers. By this trick they want to deprive us of our triumph over communism – “We, who defeated them in 1989, who threw them, with their regime, onto the ash heap of history “.

Speaking at the remembrance ceremony in the museum, Bence Rétvári, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Interior Ministry, said that “If the triad of God, country and family is the compass we follow, then we will not stray towards any extremism and we will protect our nation from dictatorships and loss of freedom.”

The commemoration was opened by Rajmund Fekete, Director of the Institute for the Research of Communism, who said in his speech that “those who before 23 August 1939 thought that communism promised only heaven on earth and that only the Nazis deserved any contempt or disdain, must have been brought to their senses by the pact between Hitler and Stalin. While the two dictatorships agreed on how to divide the world between them, they also showed their true colours, as it became clear to all that the ideological differences between the Nazis and the communists were only superficial.”

Mr. Rétvári said that there is little difference between Nazism and communism, as both denied Christianity and civic democracy, and therefore a joint day of remembrance for the victims of both dictatorships is justified. Further shared characteristics of the two regimes that he identified were the confiscation of property, the destruction of livelihoods, political trials, labour camps and opposition to religion. He stressed that the aim is to finally establish that there are no distinctions between one group of victims and another on the basis of the ideology under which people’s property or future was taken, and to ensure that these ideologies cannot be rehabilitated, repackaged or reintroduced anywhere in the world. But, the Minister of State noted, there is still a double standard related to these two ideologies, because in Western Europe people still do not fully understand what we are commemorating on 23 August. He said that this was demonstrated by the fact that, in its press release related to the remembrance day, the European Commission had urged for continuation of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Therefore, “to talk on the Day of Remembrance about increasing the number of victims in a war shows that they have not understood what this day is about.” He also referred to an earlier speech by Ferenc Gyurcsány, President of the Democratic Coalition, in which the opposition politician argued that no equivalence can be made between fascism and communism, and that the red star is a symbol of social democratic origin, the banning of which is unreasonable. Mr. Rétvári also said that a few years ago we thought there would never be another pandemic, but then the coronavirus emerged. We also thought there would never be another war in Europe, and now there is a war in a country neighbouring ours. The Secretary of State stressed that on this basis, in order to ensure that extremist ideologies such as communism and Nazism – or repackaged versions of them – never return, it is important to stand up for Christian and national values. He added that we must beware ideologies that declare that they have superseded Christianity, because in the 20th century such ideologies caused destruction on an inhuman scale.

Mária Schmidt, Director-General of the House of Terror Museum, said: “In recent years there have been renewed and growing attempts to draw a distinction between the Nazi and communist ideologies.

“They want to create the impression that these two vile worldviews have nothing to do with each other – as if they emerged separately, followed different paths, and had different natures.
“But the opposite is true.

“Nazism and communism walked hand in hand and do so today; they were able to count on each other and do so today; they have built on each other, and they have drawn on each other.”

Professor Schmidt said that only remembrance and the encouragement of remembrance can prevent us from falling under the rule of dictatorships and dictators again. “Let us not care that some people make a distinction between one type of executioner and another, let us not allow those who suffered under only one type to grant pardon to the communist executioners”, she said.

She said that in the West they are erecting statues to Marx and Lenin, with which Westerners want to “make themselves the victors and us the losers”, and seek to “deprive us of our triumph over communism”. Through this, however, they are also making it impossible for us to jointly think with them about a future based on shared moral foundations, she said. The historian also said that they were using a “linguistic-political trick” to make the idea of communism palatable by renaming it “socialism”. This suggests that communism wanted a better, fairer world, but all it achieved was socialism, which did not live up to these hopes. Interestingly, no such linguistic distinction is made in relation to Nazism, Professor Schmidt pointed out.

She stressed that such “code names” could not, however, deceive those who lived under communism, because they knew full well that they were being ruled by communists. “Let’s call a spade a spade: Hungary was not socialism, but communism”, and the memory of the victims demands clear, plain speech and uncompromising action against both communism and Nazism, she said.

At the initiative of Hungarians, Poles and Lithuanians, since 2011 the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Totalitarian Dictatorships has been celebrated on 23 August, the date in 1939 that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed.