Address by Titusz Hardi
at the Holocaust memorial ceremony held at the Jewish cemetery in Győr on 22 June 2025
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is difficult for me to speak. But I feel it is my duty.
It is very difficult for me to speak because the loss is so great.
I love history, but right now it is so difficult to remember. To remember our loved ones, to remember the loss, to face our responsibility. Where should I begin to remember?
On 9 July 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Ferenczy sent the following report to the Minister of the Interior:
“Since the start of deportations:
From 14 May 1944 to the present day, a total of 434,351 persons of Jewish origin have left the country on 147 trains.”
And he continues with boundless cynicism:
„No reports of abuse, assault or misconduct by Hungarian law enforcement agencies during the collection and transport in the area mentioned above have been received.”
According to these accounts, Lieutenant Colonel Ferenczy did not consider it abuse to deprive people of all their possessions, beat them with swords, herd them into cattle cars and cram them in so tightly that many of them did not survive the journey yet on Hungarian soil. The dead were disposed of in Kassa, and there the transport was taken over by the German authorities.
The tragedy did not begin on 14 May 1944. By then, the Jews had already been confined to ghettos.
The tragedy did not begin with the ghettoisation. By then, our compatriots had already been marked and forced to wear yellow stars.
The tragedy did not begin with the wearing of yellow stars. By then, they had already been deprived of their jobs, their livelihoods, and their human dignity. They were robbed under the cover of state laws. The robbery became systematic. Wide segments of society were drawn into this plundering, turning large masses of the population into accomplices of the regime.
When I wanted to find out exactly which laws and regulations restricted the lives of Jews between 1938 and 1945, I was shocked to discover that the text of these shameful regulations alone would fill a medium-sized book.
The tragedy did not begin on 29 May 1938, when the First Law on Jews came into force. By then, the majority of public opinion had been convinced that there was a ‘Jewish question’. And if there was a Jewish question, then it had to be solved.
It is very difficult for me to continue, but I cannot avoid mentioning the responsibility of the churches, the historical churches, the Catholic Church.
In our country, the historical churches failed this test. Because they remained silent, because they fuelled murderous fires with their ambiguous or openly anti-Semitic speeches. I thought long and hard about whether to quote from church speeches from the 1920s and 1930s. They are so shameful, so disgraceful, that I am unwilling to repeat the words spoken by bishops, loudmouth parish priests, or ‘Hungarist’ individuals who claimed to be Christians and were not ashamed to write them down. There are volumes of anti-Semitic incitement in our libraries. These speeches and writings paved the way to the Holocaust, and when the opportunity arose, the tragedy occurred.
St. Benedict wrote about such people 1,500 years ago in the Regula:
‘It is better to remain silent about their miserable way of life than to speak of it.’
This era rejected the Nazarene, to whom it constantly referred. It rejected Jesus, who never abandoned his people, who, in his own words, did not come to abolish the Torah, but to fulfil it. We are familiar with the story of when a man of the law asked Jesus which was the greatest commandment in the law. He received the following answer:
וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃
וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ
“Love your neighbour as yourself.”
I am unable to comprehend how Hungary’s legislature, which claimed to be Christian, could have overlooked this sentence when, between 1938 and the end of 1943, it passed not just three or four laws against Jews, but a whole series of laws and decrees, which gradually excluded its citizens of Jewish origin from society, stigmatised them, made their lives impossible and robbed them. By the time the Nazi army marched into Hungary in March 1944, everything was ready for the ghettos to be set up within weeks and the deportations to begin. The murderous machinery was set up by the Hungarian authorities.
All this was watched silently by the Christian Hungarian society, or carried out eagerly, or awaited with complicity so that they could take their share of the loot. Few stood up against it, but some did. We must mention them for two reasons. On the one hand, because they show that things could have been different; on the other hand, because they encourage us: by following their example, future can be completely different.
Some individuals deserve to be named :
Andor Lázár, Minister of Justice of Hungary in 1938. He refused to sign the First Law on Jews. His conscience would not allow it, and he resigned.
Ferenc Kálló, dean and camp chaplain. He was a leading figure in the anti-fascist movement. He hid countless Jews in military hospitals, declaring them sick so they could be saved, and they were then able to leave with Christian papers. After Szálasi seized power, the dean, who was bedridden, was executed by the Arrow Cross on 29 October 1944.
Sára Salkaházy, Margit Slachta. The entire community of Sisters of Charity consistently stood up for the Jewish people from the very beginning. Sister Sára hid her Jewish brothers and sisters until one day she was shot along with them by the Arrow Cross into the Danube.
When we sprinkle ashes on our heads and acknowledge the guilty silence, and sometimes complicity, of our churches in the tragedy of the Shoah, I also say that we must look to the past for the great examples mentioned above: it was possible to act differently, to remain human even in the midst of the greatest inhumanity.
Jewish brothers and sisters,
I would like to tell you that a new generation has grown up. We see you differently in our hearts. We received the Torah, the Prophets, and the Scriptures from you. We received our Master, the Rabbi of Nazareth.
We look up to you with the respect and devotion that a younger person feels for an older sibling. Because they are smarter, wiser, more experienced. And above all, we would put our hands in the fire for them, because they are our only older sibling, bound to us by unbreakable ties of love. This is how we see you. We belong to one family. And from here I send you this message: if anyone ever tries to hurt you again, they will have to go through us first. Our role models are Angelo Rotta, Áron Márton, Gábor Sztehlo, Sára Salkaházy, Krizosztom Kelemen, Raoul Wallenberg, and I could go on and on.
Allow me to conclude with a prayer:
Eternal God,
Your ways are inscrutable. We often do not understand them.
Now we present to you our brothers and sisters who should be resting here, but whom we lost 81 years ago.
אָבִֽינוּ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ שׁ֝וֹמֵ֗ר יִשְׂרָאֵֽל
We confess that You are Israel’s guardian!
You who are the Lord of Life, remember the souls of your children who have passed into eternity!
May they be bound in the bonds of eternal life, together with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, and the immortal spirits of the glorified pious, in the land of eternal salvation, AMEN.
Titus Hardi
Titus Hardi OSB, Director General of the Saint Benedict Schools, is, as his title suggests, a Benedictine monk, priest and teacher. He is an extraordinary MAN and a wonderful personality. A Humanist.
He was born in Budapest in 1962 and spent years of his childhood with his parents in Algeria. He graduated from the University ELTE with a degree in Hungarian and French languages and literature. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1986. He is the recipient of numerous honours (e.g. Knight of the French Palm Academic Order, Ember Mária Award, Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit). (link)
He has been on several charity missions to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where his brother, Richard Hardi, an ophthalmologist, became an eye doctor for millions of poor people at a clinic built with donations. (link)
Father Titusz provided indispensable assistance to our foundation, the Jewish Roots in Győr Public Charity Foundation, in its 2023-24 student contest ‘Their Fate, Our History’ organised on the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Jews of Győr, in which three teams from the Pannonhalma Benedictine High School took part alongside teams from Győr and Csorna. (link) Their team has also entered our 2025 project on the theme of “Jewry, acceptance and exclusion ‘25”. (link)
Cypresses planted on 6 July 2024 by participants of the Jewish Roots in Győr World Reunion at the Jewish cemetery in Győr-Sziget, June 2025 – photo: pkr
Edited and translated into English by Péter Krausz