1987. május (53-73. szám) / HU_BFL_XIV_47_2
K MARIAN (§) 24/0 líttl* R«*fcell Street, LONDON, WC.{ ■ Ttl. 04~*so zi 26 • G. Krasié 57/1987 M 9th May, 1987 "The Memory of Raoul Wallenberg" - Commemorating Speech of Gáspár Miklós Tamás On the 8th of May, 1987, an inofficial exhibition in commemcratinof Raoul Wallenberg has been opened in Budapest in an independent institution called the "Altemative Cultural Centre". On the opening of the exhibition the philosopher Gáspár Miklós Tamás, a well-known figure of the democratic opposition, delivered a commemorating speech, the full text of which we print below. The Memory of Raoul Wallenberg Just read the newspapers. The USA and Canada declared an undesirable alien dr.Kurt Waldheim, the federal president of Austria, ex generál secretary of the UNO, because of his Second World War activity as a Germán intelligence officer in the Balkan peninsula. The first foreign statesman to visit him thereafter, was the Hungárián foreign minister, dr. Péter Várkonyi. The Soviet news agency TASS reported that Franz Muhri, secretary generál of the Communist Party of Austria condemned the American-Canadian step. The US Congress sugges- ted to exclude Rumania from among the so-called "most favoured nations" in trade with the USA, among other things because of its oppression of the Hungárián national minority. The Soviet news agency TASS reported that Mikhail Sergeievich Gorbachev, secretary generál of the CPSU, will visit Rumania before long. The Czechoslovak head of state, dr.Gustav Husak is simi- larly due to visit Rumania. In Budapest the statue of Raoul Wallenberg has been unveiled. The maker of the statue is the artist Imre Yarga, awarded by the Kossuth-prize, who, according to the best Hungárián traditions, usually models the statues of those - Karolyi, Béla Kun, Lukács - who would only shoot at each other even after their death. After all, even the liberation monument has been made originally to honour the drunkard pilot, deputy govemor István Horthy. János Kádár in Stockholm proudly speaks of the Wallenberg- statue. The newspaper "Magyar Hirlap" uses the wording 'Wallenberg became a victim of the "cult of personality" - the first time they officially acknow- ledge, who is responsible fór Wallenberg's fate. The leadership of the Jewish World Congress assembled fór sessions in Budapest, fór the first time in a Communist country. After fi’ve years perhaps no one will perceive the inner rhymes in the tangled coil of these news. After fifty years perhaps no one will even under- stand, why the Swedish diplomát Raoul Wallenberg, who tried to savé victims of National Socialism and then perished in one of the concentration camps of the Soviet Union alluding to International Socialism, has become a symbolic fi- gure. Wallenberg was a Symbol in the eyes of those who opposed rlghtist and leftist dictatorships as well, those who preferred practical humanitarian activity to the lofty rhetoric and blood-soaked basements of tyranny, who valued liberal humanism even in the hours of its weakness and defeat higher than the spirit of the age embodied in armour wearing svastikas and red stars, the irreligion of the new Dark Ages, the hot air of the truth of the soil and roots of the nation, the determined foreignhess of racial self- centredness. He has been a symbol fór us, sarcastic democrats and sentimental
