Syrian Children

Syian child and Mother at Budapest Railway Station

I suppose deep down its really about the children.  Its unlikely that mothers and fathers and entire families would risk death in open boats crossing the Aegean sea were it not for the future of their children.  Surely their children are foremost on their minds.

During the Holocaust in the Budapest Ghetto women were asked to undress before they were sent away because they were known to have children hidden inside their skirts. Mothers asked them to be quiet and as they moved through lineups with little ones hiding inside their dresses.

At the borders of Hungary, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia leaders are saying no to the persecuted children of the world and their parents.  The Hungarian prime-minister Orban has repeatedly said that Hungary is a Christian country and yet he ignores the principles of Christianity, such as love your neighbor and do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  He forgets that Hungarians were not always Christians and that at one time they were barbarian horseman riding across the Carpathian planes in search of food and plunder. Instead he insists that the good life people enjoy in Hungary and Europe is something that was fought for many years and heaven forbid that Syrian immigrants fleeing from holocaust should have a share of this hard fought prosperity.

Ironically none of the refugees want to stay in Hungary--they just want to move on.  They sense they are shunned.  Recently Syrian children and their parents were met with tear gas and water canon at the border which had been strung with the latest and the sharpest barbed wire in history.  Instead of barbs the new wire contains rectangular razor blades every few inches.

Orban's insistence on driving the immigrants back after initially welcoming them with food, shelter and train passage to Germany from Budapest is not without political motivation.  He appears to be catering to the far right Jobbick Party which preaches anti-antisemitism and extreme nationalist views.  They are not unlike a Hungarian version of German skin-heads and pseudo Nazis.  Sadly they are able to garner twenty per cent of the vote in Hungary mostly, and ironically among students at universities in Budapest and other large cities in the country.  What does this bode for a country long isolated by language and history from western Europe and above all America who welcomed Hungarians fleeing persecution in 1956.  There are noticeably less tourists walking down
Andrassy Street these days, the cruise ships are less full and the baths are empty of tourists.


September 25th, 2015.
Budapest.