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Tens of thousands of Hungarians joined a protest march through the capital Budapest against anti-semitism on Sunday.
The capital’s March of the Living has drawn increasing numbers over the last 12 years to commemorate the deaths of more than half a million Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.
The marchers witnessed the inauguration of a Holocaust monument on the banks of the Danube where Jews were executed during the second world war and then walked in silence through the city to a railway station from which trains departed for the nazi death camps.
Three weeks earlier, the fascist Jobbik party won nearly a quarter of votes in national elections. Unemployment has fallen recently but many Hungarians still struggle to make ends meet and Jobbik has capitalised on discontent to increase its support to more than a fifth of the vote.
Speakers at the event called for dialogue with the recently re-elected government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s conservative Fidesz party, condemning its plans for a memorial to Hungary’s German occupation, saying it would conceal the responsibility of Hungarians who collaborated with the Germans to ship hundreds of thousands to the camps.
Over the past several months, Hungarian Jewish groups have expressed frustration at what they say are efforts by Orban’s government to play down the role of local authorities in the death of about 550,000 Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust. However, two of days after the Fidesz party won its second landslide victory, crews began readying the foundations of the monument.
Activists have repeatedly dismantled the fence guarding the building site but work has continued.
“We would like to believe that all is not lost and that there is room for dialogue,” said march organiser Gabor Gordon.
“The memorial is unacceptable to us in its known form.”
After the march about 600 of the participants boarded a train on a symbolic journey to Poland to take part in Monday's commemoration at the Auschwitz death camp near Krakow.