Posted on 02/17/23
| News Source: Arutz-7
The Hungarian government is demanding an apology from the Biden administration after US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a high-level UN summit on antisemitism earlier in the month that a vandalized Holocaust memorial honoring Raoul Wallenberg was located in Hungary.
Listing recent antisemitic incidents – including a Molotov cocktail being thrown at a synagogue in New Jersey, a Russian missile hitting a synagogue in Ukraine, and a Jewish cemetery being vandalized with a swastika – Thomas-Greenfield told the ‘High-Level Side Event on Globalizing Efforts to Combat Antisemitism’ that a “Holocaust memorial was vandalized in Hungary,” Breitbart reported.
But the claim was erroneous. The memorial in question, a sculpture dedicated to Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Hungary during Holocaust, is actually located in the Ångfärje Park in Helsingborg, Sweden.
In late January, officials in Helsingborg announced that an unknown individual had dumped white paint over the statue.
The vandalism was part of a dangerous trend of attacks on the country's Jewish community and its institutions. Sweden has experienced record levels of antisemitism in recent years.
Hungarian Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Zoltán Kovács wrote that the Hungarian Embassy to the UN was demanding a public correction and formal apology from the US Embassy, according to the news outlet.
“Representatives of Hungary stood puzzled by Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield’s claims, as no such act of vandalism had occurred in Hungary for years,” Kovács said.
“In fact, Hungary is one of the safest countries for Jewish people in Europe, with Jewish communities experiencing a ‘renaissance’ for more than a decade now,” he added.