Budapest: Hungary has joined Poland in denouncing remarks by FBI director James Comey which seemed to equate Poland's and Hungary's roles in the Holocaust with that of Germany.
Hungary's Foreign Ministry said today that Comey's remarks delivered last week at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and then published in The Washington Post were defamatory of Hungarians. The ministry said it has sent a written complaint to the US Embassy in Budapest.
"The words of the FBI director bear witness to astounding insensitivity and impermissible superficiality," the ministry said in a statement. "We do not accept from anyone the formulation of such a generalisation and defamation." Comey, arguing for the importance of Holocaust education, said: "In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary ... Didn't do something evil."
"They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do," Comey said in the speech which was also posted without any clarification on the FBI's website. "That should truly frighten us."
Comey's comments were particularly offensive to Poles, who pointed out that Poland was under brutal German occupation during the entire war and actively opposed it.
Hungary first sided with Hitler against Russia but later tried to negotiate a peace deal with the Allies and was then invaded by Germany. Many officials there willingly carried out Nazi orders to deport Jews.
Poland's Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said that Comey's words were "unacceptable," and that "Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War II."
In all, six million Polish citizens were killed during the war, about half of them Jewish and the other half Christians.
Today, the directors of several Polish war-time museums wrote to Comey to say they were "deeply concerned" by his words and to invite him to Poland for a "study visit" that could help him understand the complex history of Europe under Nazi German occupation from 1939-45.
