A Jewish girl who was stabbed and injured by neo-Nazi skin-heads has become the subject of national attention after Hungarian Interior Minister Peter Boross made a special point of promising punishment for the offenders.
Boross said it was unacceptable for skinheads wearing swastikas to be attacking people on the streets of Budapest. Speaking in Parliament, Boross said that “this Nazi symbol has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives to the Hungarian nation.”
The 17-year-old victim of the stabbing, who did not want her name released, said she was attacked in front of her home by two youths last week who shouted at her “damned Jew.”
Police have not yet identified the youths responsible for the attack.
The girl was briefly hospitalized for light injuries and released the next day, her mother told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The girl told reporters she received warning letters declaring, “Death to the Jews,” shortly after telling her school classmates she was Jewish.
The girl, whose grandmother survived the Auschwitz death camp, is now being escorted back and forth to school by armed guards, paid for by the local Jewish community.
“It is unbelievable that more than 40 years after the Holocaust in Hungary, my daughter must go to school escorted by armed guards, because she, as a Jew, does not feel safe to go alone after what happened to her a week ago,” the girl’s mother told JTA.
An administrator in her school described the victim as a handicapped girl who lives with her mother in modest circumstances. According to the mother, she had spent some time on a kibbutz in Israel.
Discussion about the incident in Parliament became a bit heated after one member, Izabella Kiraly, defended skinheads, saying they were “young and good boys of the Hungarian nation.”
Kiraly has previously called for Hungary to rid the educational system of “foreign spirit.”
The Budapest office of the World Jewish Congress has expressed concern over this incident to the speaker of Parliament, George Szabad.
The attack comes on the heels of a clash two weeks ago between skinheads and two Gypsy men. Eight neo-Nazis were arrested for assaulting the men and distributing neo-Nazi material.
The youths later said they mistook the Gypsies for Jews.
The suspects were released, but are awaiting charges to be brought against them. Budapest’s Jewish community issued a statement protesting their release.
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