I was in Hungary in late September, Mr. Chair, and had a series of meetings there with government officials on the specific issue that the member is raising. I also had a chance to meet with the members of the Jewish community in Budapest. The Jewish community itself is obviously very concerned about the Jobbik Party, which is the party you referred to that has a very disgusting record of anti-Semitic statements. They're very concerned about its activities, but they also realize that, generally speaking, there's not a lot of direct violence against the Jewish community in Hungary. But you do have this vicious rhetoric coming out of this one political party. In my meetings with the Jewish community, they said to really please be vigilant and continue to press the Hungarian government to ensure they are consistent in their condemnation of the anti-Semitic vitriol and rhetoric coming from that party.
That was the message I conveyed to my interlocutors both in the foreign ministry and in the opportunity I had to meet with some advisers to the Prime Minister. I advanced that. One concern we have is that there are elections in Hungary this year. The Hungarian political system, as I'm sure you're aware, is a difficult mix of forces, so we want to be sure that, again, the messages that are coming out from the governing party are consistent around condemning anti-Semitism.
I think it's also important for members of the committee to know that the Hungarian government is taking steps to properly—and I think in a very significant way—mark the 70th anniversary of the 1944 deportation of Hungarian Jews. That is happening this year through a lot of different events, including the establishment of an institute around Holocaust education. When I was in Budapest, I heard the deputy prime minister give a speech at a conference in the Hungarian Parliament, in which he said we have to realize that it was not the German Nazis who did this—it was Hungarians. So—