The daughter of the late Rep.Tom Lantos is returning a state award to Hungary to protest the same award being presented to a nationalist journalist described as racist and anti-Semitic, JTA reported Monday.
Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett joins about 100 other Hungarians or people of Hungarian heritage in returning the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit, to protest the recognition last month of the right-wing journalist and columnist Zsolt Bayer for his writings.
Lantos Swett was honored with the award in 2009 for establishing the Budapest-based Tom Lantos Institute, which focuses on minority rights.
Tom Lantos, who served as a Democratic congressman for California, died in 2008. A native of Hungary, he was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress.
Lantos Swett told The Associated Press that she had hoped to leave her Knight's Cross award to her children, but could not keep it after it was awarded to Bayer.
Andras Heisler, the president of Hungary’s main Jewish umbrella organization, Mazsihisz, returned his award last month. He described Bayer as a man “who is a racist, who is an anti-Semite, who is polluting Hungary with his destructive sentiments and his burning hatred of the Roma, who is vigilantly protecting the traditions of the Hungarian extremist right, keeping alive feelings of fear and hatred.”
“I do not wish to belong to any community to which Zsolt Bayer belongs, even virtually," Heisler said at the time.
Bayer, a co-founder of the ruling Fidesz party, has long angered Jews and others with his articles and op-eds in right-wing publications.
In April, the Israeli ambassador to Hungary protested to the editor of the Magyar Hirlap newspaper, saying that Bayer’s columns “openly advocate anti-Semitic sentiments and incite against the Jewish People and the State of Israel”, noted JTA.
Anti-Semitism remains prevalent in Hungary, with much of that being perpetrated by the country's second most popular political party, Jobbik.
In November of 2012, one of Jobbik’s members released a statement saying that a list should be compiled of all of the Jewish members of government.
He was followed by another Jobbik member who called publicly for the resignation of a fellow MP who claimed to have Israeli citizenship.
The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbanhas sometimes been accused of cozying up to Jobbik and glossing over Hungary's role in the deportation of Jews, despite saying it has "zero tolerance" for anti-Semitism.
In January, Orban acknowledged for the first time his country’s role in the Holocaust, saying many Hungarians chose "bad instead of good" in helping deport Jews to Nazi death camps.