Orbán and the Hungarian “race”: Auschwitz committee says it is “terrified”.

Budapest | The International Auschwitz Committee said on Tuesday it was “dismayed” by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s comments on the “single-mixed Hungarian race”, calling on the European Union to “refrain from such racist sentiments”.

The nationalist leader’s speech, “foolish and dangerous”, reminded Holocaust survivors of “the darkest times of their own exclusion and persecution”, the organization’s vice-president Christoph Huebner responded in a statement sent to AFP.

He called on Austrian Chancellor Karl Neuhammer, who is hosting Mr Orbán on an official visit to Vienna on Thursday, to stand up for the EU. We “need the world to understand” that Mr Orbán has no future in Europe, whose values ​​he “knowingly rejects”.

In a speech on Saturday in Romanian Transylvania, home to a large Hungarian community, the nationalist leader, known for his anti-immigration policy, strongly reiterated his rejection of a “multi-ethnic” society.

“We don’t want to be a mixed race,” he said, mixing with “non-Europeans.”

“Countries where European and extra-European people live together are no longer countries. These countries are nothing more than agglomerations of people”, according to experts, even Viktor Orbán, who previously made similar comments without using the word “ethnicity”, began.

The government, through its spokesman Zoltan Kovacs, defended itself on Tuesday against the “misinterpretation” of comments made by people who did not clearly understand the difference between a mix of ethnic groups and a mixture of people in Judeo-Christianity. different civilizations”.

Mr. Orbán also referred to the Nazi regime’s gas chambers, slamming Brussels’ plan to cut European gas demand by 15%. “Despite German know-how in this area, as previously shown, I don’t see how they can force member states,” he joked.

The Hungarian Jewish community also rose up against this speech. “Many different species live on our planet. On two legs, working, talking and sometimes thinking, only one species lives on this earth: Homo sapiens sapiens. This species is one and indivisible,” Chief Rabbi Robert Froelich wrote on Facebook.

Among the political class, Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Arescu found such “ideas” “unacceptable”.