Csanad Szegedi
We are not blessed with the privilege to choose our preferred belly, on our way into this planet, which every human’s passage through pregnancy. It was intriguing when the rising star in Hungary's far-right Jobbik Party, came face to face with a candid fact that he was a Jew. The revelation knocked him off his perch as an ultra-nationalist standard-bearer:
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) —Csanad Szegedi was famous for his provocative remarks on Jews: He accused them of "buying up" the country, complaining about the "Jewishness" of the political elite and claimed Jews were insulting national symbols.
Following several weeks of Internet rumors, Szegedi finally acknowledged in June that his grandparents on his mother's side were Jews which automatically puts him too under Jewish law, even though he doesn't practice the faith. His grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor and his grandfather a veteran of forced labor camps.Since then, the 30-year-old has become an outsider in Jobbik and his political career disintegrating. He declined to talk to the press.
The story was revealed when an audio tape of a 2010 meeting between Szegedi and a convicted offender sneaks to the open. Although Szegedi acknowledges that the meeting took place but contends the tape was altered in unspecified ways; but Jobbik was not convinced.
In the recording, the convict is heard confronting Szegedi with evidence of his Jewish ancestry. Szegedi sounds astonished, and then offers money and string-pulling in exchange for keeping it secret.
Under duress, Szegedi resigned last month from all party positions and gave up his Jobbik connection. The party insisted that he should give up his seat in the European Parliament as well. Jobbik insist that the issue is beyond his ancestry but his action of suspected bribery.
Szegedi started his career in 2007 as a founding member of the Hungarian Guard, a group which wore black uniforms and striped flags like the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party which temporarily governed Hungary towards the end of World War II, they were reputed to have killed thousands of Jews, about 550,000 Hungarian Jews were killed during the Holocaust, most of them were sent in trains to death camps like Auschwitz. The Hungarian Guard was proscribed by the courts in 2009.
By then, Szegedi had crossed into the Jobbik Party, which was launched in 2003 it rose to become the country's biggest far-right political force. He rose quickly in the ranks mostly due to his strategic public utterances to become a stakeholder in the party leadership. Since 2009, he has served in the European Parliament in Brussels as one of the party's three EU lawmakers, a position he was not ready to let go.
The revelation of Szegedi's ancestry tale has affected his business interests. Jobbik executive director Gabor Szabo pulled out of an Internet site he owns with Szegedi. Szabo and further confirmed his sister resignation as Szegedi's personal assistant.
In the 2010 tape, former convict Zoltan Ambrus is heard telling Szegedi that he has documents proving Szegedi is Jewish. The right-wing politician seems genuinely surprised by the news — and offers EU funds and a possible EU job to Ambrus to shut up.
Ambrus, who served time in prison on a weapons and explosives conviction, apparently rejected the bribes. He said he secretly taped the conversation as part of an internal Jobbik power struggle aimed at ousting Szegedi from a local party leadership post. The party's reaction was swift.
"We have no alternative but to ask him to return his EU mandate," said Jobbik president Gabor Vona. "Jobbik does not investigate the heritage of its members or leadership, but instead takes into consideration what they have done for the nation."
Szegedi's was not alone in ancestry sagas: The Holocaust was an unmentionable subject during Hungary's decades of Marxist rule that ended in 1990, and many survivors chose to keep their ordeals to themselves. Russian far-right agitator Vladimir Zhirinovsky was anti-Semitic until he acknowledged in 2001 that his father was Jewish.
Szegedi, who was raised Presbyterian, acknowledged his Jewish origins in June interviews with Hungarian media, including news broadcaster Hir TV and Barikad, Jobbik's weekly magazine. He said that after the meeting with Ambrus, he had a long discussion with his grandmother, who spoke about her family's past as Orthodox Jews.
"It was then that it dawned on me that my grandmother really is Jewish," Szegedi told Hir TV. "I asked her how the deportations happened. She was in Auschwitz and Dachau and she was the only survivor in the extended family."
Judaism is traced from mother to child, meaning that under Jewish law Szegedi is Jewish. Szegedi said he defines himself as someone with "ancestry of Jewish origin — because I declare myself 100 percent Hungarian."
In the interview with Hir TV, Szegedi shorn of ever having made anti-Semitic statements, but several of his speeches and media appearances show otherwise.
In a November 2010 interview on Hungarian state television, Szegedi blamed the large-scale privatization of state assets after the end of communism on "people in the Hungarian political elite who shielded themselves in their Jewishness."
Speaking on a morning program in late 2010, he said that "the problem the radical right has with the Jews" was that Jewish artists, actors and intellectuals had desecrated Hungary's national symbols like the Holy Crown of St. Stephen, the country's first Christian king.
Szegedi also complained of "massive real estate purchases being done in Hungary, where — it's no secret — they want to bring in Israeli residents."
Szegedi met in early August with Rabbi Slomo Koves, of Hungary's Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch community, whose own parents were in their teens when they discovered they were Jewish.
"As a rabbi ... it is my duty to receive every person who is in a situation of crisis and especially a Jew who has just now faced his heritage," Koves said.
During the meeting, Szegedi apologized for any statements which may have offended the Jewish community, and vowed to visit Auschwitz to pay his respects.
Koves described the conversation as "difficult and spiritually stressful," but said he is hopeful for a successful outcome.
"Csanad Szegedi is in the middle of a difficult process of reparation, self-knowledge, re-evaluation and learning, which according to our hopes and interests, should conclude in a positive manner," Koves said. "Whether this will occur or not is first and foremost up to him."
