A bomb scare at the Anna Frank Jewish high school here last week has been linked to a parliamentary debate over the emergence of neo-Nazi forces in the Hungarian Democratic Forum, the ruling political party.
The school, which adjoins what is presently the only active rabbinical seminary in Eastern and Central Europe, was evacuated Feb. 12 after two anonymous telephone calls to the principal warned that a bomb would explode in an hour.
Police searched both buildings but found nothing.
The caller referred to a speech made in Parliament the day before by a Jewish member, Gyorgy Gado, who charged that “there are fascists” in the Hungarian Democratic Forum and criticized the government for not repudiating them.
Gado cited the extreme right-wing newspaper Hunnia, which promulgates an openly neo-Nazi ideology and is widely circulated in democratic Hungary.
The Democratic Forum maintained that the extremists were marginal and accused Gado of exaggerating their influence.
But Hungarian writer Gyorgy Konrad, president of PEN, the international writers association, warned that “these extremist nationalistic things should not be dismissed.”
Konrad, a Jew, recalled that at the beginning of the 1930s, nobody took Adolf Hitler seriously.
Gusztav Zoltai, secular leader of the Hungarian Jewish community, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he agrees with Gado.
He called it sad that Jews have once again become the subjects of a debate in Parliament.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
