HUNGARY: Thousands of Hungarians demonstrated yesterday outside the former headquarters of the notorious Arrow Cross party 60 years after its Nazi allies helped it seize power and prolong the fascist reign of terror against Jews.
A broad spectrum of political parties, Jewish organisations and rights groups met outside the building - which is now a museum remembering fascist and Soviet terror - to denounce the Arrow Cross, and to celebrate the cancellation of a rival march that had been planned by the party's modern supporters.
The Budapest authorities banned the meeting of the far-right Hungarian Future group after granting the one permit to convene at the venue to its liberal opponents.
The group's plans were further complicated by its leader, Ms Diana Bacsfi (26), beginning a 10-day jail sentence yesterday for disturbing the peace.
This prevented her from leading tributes to the Arrow Cross for, as she puts it, saving Hungary from immediate takeover by the approaching Soviet army.
On October 15th, 1944, just hours after wartime leader Mr Miklos Horthy split with Germany to announce a ceasefire with the Allies, Nazi soldiers kidnapped him, and the Arrow Cross militia seized control of strategic points around Budapest.
Armistice celebrations ended as Arrow Cross leader Mr Ferenc Szalasi told the nation that it would remain Hitler's ally, and his men began herding a third of Budapest's 225,000 Jews into a central ghetto. Another 30,000 went into hiding.
Though the Arrow Cross won 25 per cent of votes in 1939 elections, by early 1944 Mr Szalasi was a "failed politician", according to historian Mr Tamas Stark, and officials had ignored German demands for the mass deportation of Jews.
That changed when Nazi troops occupied Hungary in March 1944, and more than 400,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps in just 56 days.
The Arrow Cross held power in Budapest for about four months, and two months longer in north-west Hungary. However it managed to execute another 100,000 Jews before being routed by the Soviet army.
Mr Szalasi and nearly 150 officials were later executed, and 27,000 others condemned for war crimes.
"Most, if not all, of Hungarian society was much more afraid of the Soviets than of the Germans," says Mr Stark.
"This is one of the tragedies of Hungarian history: that the fate of Jewish and non-Jewish Hungarians totally split in two."