Several hundred people demonstrating against communism shouted anti-Semitic epithets at a statue of Bela Kun that was toppled and carted away Wednesday.
Kun, whose father was Jewish, headed the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. He escaped to the Soviet Union where he died in 1937, possibly after being executed.
The crowd that shouted “Bloody Communist” and “Bloody Jew” at his image was composed mainly of members of the Saint Crown Society, an extreme nationalist, anti-Semitic group generally regarded here as the dregs of society.
The occasion was the 35th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising, when Soviet tanks entered Budapest in October 1956 to abort a revolt against Communist rule.
Since the ouster of the Communist regime in 1989, the date has become a national holiday at which Hungarians are exhorted to be more active in politics.
But apart from the extremists who used anti-communism as a vehicle for Jew-baiting, the response Wednesday was apathetic. Hungarians are less concerned with politics than with the economic hardships that have come with their political freedom.
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