Budapest’s “House of Fates” Holocaust Museum built three years ago by the Hungarian government at the cost of $22 million has been given to the Chabad-affiliated Unified Israelite Congregation of Hungary (EMIH) and is to open next year in time for the 75th anniversary of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry.
The 80,000-square-foot building is expected to host 100,000 visitors annually from schools alone.
Yad Vashem and Hungary’s Mazsihisz federation which represents Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities refused to cooperate with the museum because historian Maria Schmidt who was appointed to direct it maintains that Nazism was no worse than Soviet communism.
Shlomo Koves, executive rabbi of the EMIH group, told JTA that Schmidt’s role “will be over” when the museum opens next year.
Mazsihisz maintains that the Hungarian government encourages anti-Semitism. The group broke ties with the government in 2014 after it unveiled a sculpture suggesting that Hungary was a victim of Nazism rather than a collaborator.
{Matzav.com}
