Hungarian official retracts comments comparing philanthropist George Soros to Hitler

Hungarian ministerial commissioner Szilard Demeter has retracted his article where he had compared American-Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist George Soros to Adolf Hitler. The move comes after Demeter garnered condemnation for the comparison. Soros, who is a known critic of the Hungarian government and a survivor of the Holocaust, was called a "liberal Fuhrer" by Demeter in an opinion piece published in the pro-government Origo media outlet on Sunday. 

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'Unforgivable and tasteless'

The article sparked outrage among the Hungarian-Jewish community, who dubbed the opinion piece as "tasteless" and "unforgivable." The Unified Hungarian Jewish Congregation said that the article is a "textbook" example of relativisation of the Holocaust and called it against the Hungarian government's claim of zero tolerance for anti-semitism.

As per reports, Demeter said that he agrees on the part that the article can unintentionally revive the horrific memories of the victims of the Holocaust and therefore retracts his comments. 

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In the article, Demeter accused Soros of treating Europe as his own version of a gas chamber, referring to the horrific chambers used by Hitler and his army of Nazis to kill Jewish people during World War II.

Demeter, who has been appointed ministerial commissioner and head of the Petofi Literary Museum in Budapest by Hungarian Prime Viktor Orban, slammed Soros because of his latest criticism of the government, who along with Poland, has blocked the European Union's seven-year budget plan. 

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Orban's government, colluding with Warsaw, has halted the passage of the EU's seven-year budget plan over a certain clause that would have allowed the bloc to stop fundings to Hungary and Poland over alleged judicial underminings in both countries. Demeter also wrote that Soros, who is a frequent contributor to the liberal cause in Hungary, is defied by his "liberal-Army" more than Nazis defied Hitler. 

Israel, which is one of Hungary's closest allies, also condemned Demeter's article as they said there is no place for "connecting the worst crime in human history or its perpetrators" to contemporary debates. Gordon Bajnai, former Hungarian prime minister, said that if Demeter is not removed from his official position by Monday then the world must consider the comments as the position of the present government. 

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