Yellow Star Holocaust Memorials Held in Hungary

Holocaust memorials marking the 70th anniversary of the deportations of Jews from Hungary to Nazi death camps in 1944. Authorities forced some 220,000 Budapest Jews to move on June 21 into around 2,000 buildings marked with yellow Jewish Stars of David. The Yellow Star Houses project, organized by the Open Society Archives (OSA). Exploring the history I was fortunate to join behalf of the organization as a videographer/photographer. 

I start at 10am at Ujpest rakpart 5. where Ambassador of Portugal in Budapest Antonio Jorge Mendes gave a speech and remembered Carlos Sampaio Garrido, ambassador and Teixeira Branquinho chargé d'affaires in mission to Budapest in 1944 who managed to rescue more than a thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.

Antonio Jorge Mendes with his wife

The next event I visited held at the US Embassy of Hungary. US Chargé d’Affaires André Goodfriend commemorated the rescue work of the diplomats Carl Lutz who saved thousands of lives during the Holocaust in Budapest, and was awarded the honorific “Righteous Among the Nations.” Than talked about the “Persecution of the Jews and the role of yellow-star houses in World War II.”

Hungarian-American author and journalist Kati Marton who fled her homeland, Hungary with her journalist parents also delivered a speech, then I joined to the guided walk led by US Embassy staff (Elisabeth Webster, Megan Moore, Karin Posner-Mullen to the former yellow-star houses on Aulich str, Hold str., Perczel Mor str. where Ilan Mor the Ambassador of the State of Israel also held a non-official short speech. Steven Andrew Geiger (Mensch Foundation) and his wife also joined the event.

Kati Marton and Steven Andrew Geiger 

Elisabeth Webster, André Goodfriend and Ilan Mor

As part of the commemoration-series of the Open Society Archives, the Tom Lantos Institute also organized an event to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the tragedy and to remember the legacy of Tom Lantos, who was forced to stay at Szent István Park 25 for more than half a year during the last months of World War II. Anna-Mária Bíró, President and CEO of the Tom Lantos Institute gave an emotional speech, than Katrina Lantos-Swett, daughter of the late Congressman sent video message to the audience. At the end of the event students of the Berzsenyi Dániel Gimnázium, Tom Lantos’s alma mater read out a selection of his personal memories of that period. (US Chargé d’Affaires André Goodfriend and Ilan Mor the Ambassador of the State of Israel also joined the event.)

Anna-Mária Bíró