Krakow and two other locales — There are statues and streets to Pál Teleki (1879–1941), a count and geographer who was twice prime minister of Hungary in Poland. During his first premiership (1920–1921), Hungary passed antisemitic laws limiting Jewish access to education. During his second premiership (1939–1941), Teleki championed and signed into law numerous pieces of antisemitic legislation stripping Hungarian Jews of rights and instituting forced labor for Jewish men. The laws, which were modeled on the Nuremberg Laws, paved the way for the annihilation of Hungary’s Jews. In total, around 550,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated thanks to efforts of collaborators like Teleki. Jewish organizations including the Simon Wiesenthal Center have protested attempts to honor him.

Poland’s other honors to Teleki include a statue in Skierniewice (below right) and a street in Warsaw. The Skierniewice statue is part of a complex of leaders of countries that supported Poland during its war against the USSR in 1918–1921. Another statue in the complex is of Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petliura (1879–1926) whose troops murdered tens of thousands of Jews, but two decades before the Holocaust.

From the same country that destroyed monuments to the Red Army several years ago.

  • huf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    teleki was the usual kind of scum, but his suicide note is interesting:

    “We broke our word, – out of cowardice […] The nation feels it, and we have thrown away its honor. We have allied ourselves to scoundrels […] We will become body-snatchers! A nation of trash. I did not hold you back. I am guilty.”

    but of course he’s quite wrong, we were already a nation of trash long before he killed himself.

  • opiumfree@lemmygrad.mldeleted by creator
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    1 month ago

    my country has thousands of soviet soldiers buried here, i will visit them soon.

  • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 month ago

    didn’t they file an official protest when ukraine reburied a nazi collaborator with state honors? Genocidal Nazi heroes for me but not for thee.