The Hungarian government has announced that the installation of a controversial monument which critics say glosses over the country’s active role in the Holocaust will be postponed until after the general election.

Design for the planned monument on Budapest's Liberty Square

Design for the planned monument on Budapest’s Liberty Square

The monument, to be unveiled as Hungary marks the 70th anniversary of the start of mass deportations of Jews when the Nazis took power in 1944, will also be renamed, according to a statement. It will no longer be “dedicated to the memory of the German occupation” but to the “victims of the German occupation”, and will be inaugurated on 31 May 2014 instead of 19 March, the anniversary of the German occupation of Hungary in 1944.

Hungary was a close ally of Hitler Germany during World War II, and Hungarian authorities were complicit in sending hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to the death camps. The planned monument depicts Hungary as an angel being attacked by a German eagle, which critics say absolves Hungarians of their role in sending some 450,000 Jews to their deaths.
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