Tragedies treated equally

Editor's Note: Watch how the Hungarian Communist Party leader downplays the communist terror.

The great tragedies of the 20th century, the Holocaust and the Communist terror are now treated equally in Hungary. The conservative Hungarian government back in 2010, passed laws that equate communist crimes with those of the holocaust. A person can get three years in jail for denying or casting doubt over the repressions of the Hungarian communist regime. It generated a lot of controversy a couple of years ago but it was a long time coming.
 

It is a fact that Hungarian citizens (Jews and Christians) suffered greatly under both of these terrors and tragedies. Human suffering and tragedy is the same for all, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. For decades after World War Two, there was no acknowledgement in the world for the crimes of communism. Often fascism usually took the bad rap for starting the Second World War and the results that it had inflicted upon different nations and peoples. This is because the Soviet Union was one of the victors and did not want the world to know what they had done for decades since the end of the First World War when they came to power.

A majority of people in the western world didn't even know that the communists and Soviets inflicted some of the worst crimes in human history. Due to recent data being release in the last 20 years since the fall of communism, it is a well-known fact that around 100 million people world-wide if not more perished due to communism. The international left often downplays this figure or even denies it. They often say that the communism that occurred during the 20th century in many countries was not "true" communism. To them, "true" communism was supposed to be different and not how it killed millions across the world.

The interesting thing is that the Russian Soviets were committing horrible crimes well before Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in the 1930s. The Soviet police called the NKVD, committed numerous crimes that were backed and ordered by Stalin and the communist authorities. The Holodomor in the Ukraine was a systematic and planned starving of the Ukrainian people during the early 1930s. It is estimated that seven to ten million Ukrainians were starved to death by the Russian communist authorities.

Hungary, like many other Central European countries, suffered greatly under communism in the 20th century. It is estimated that 600,000 to 800,000 Hungarians were deported to Soviet gulags from 1945 to 1952 as work labour. Many more were executed, tortured and imprisoned by the communists throughout the decades since 1919, when the they first came to power in Hungary. 

To say that the communist terror in Hungary never occurred or to cast doubt on it is pure ignorance. The Hungarian left-wing try to downplay the communist terror, little do they know what impacts it had left on many Hungarians. The minimizing of the communist terror is done for political reasons as many current Hungarian left-wingers were former card carrying communist party members or have relatives who were. This law was definitely needed in order to prevent those who would deny the terror for political or personal reasons. It shows Hungarians that they no longer have to suffer in silence and that what was inflicted on them by the communist regime is now internationally known and acknowledged.

As human beings, tragedies often have profound effects on us all. Both the fascist and communist terrors were huge in magnitude in Hungary and effected many greatly. Both ideologies shared similar traits and characteristics that were undemocratic in nature. The terrors both ideologies inflicted were brutal against human beings and their dignity. Because of this, the tragedies they inflicted on the Hungarian people should be treated equally.

István