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Elie Wiesel repudiates his Hungarian Merit Award over ideology
![](http://carolynyeager.net/system/files/images/EW_award.jpg)
The award Wiesel is returning is the Republic of Hungary’s Order of Merit, Grand Cross presented to him by president Ferenc Madl in 2004. Let’s hope he never gets it back.
Wiesel said last week that he was “outraged” that Hungarian House Speaker Laszlo Kover participated, together with Hungarian Secretary of State for Culture Geza Szocs and far-right Jobbik party leader Gabor Vona, in a re-burial ceremony in Romania honoring author Jozsef Nyiro, who was a member of the Arrow Cross Parliament during the 1930′s.
“It’s just too close to home,” Wiesel told an Associated Press interviewer. In a letter to Kover, he wrote “It is with profound dismay and indignation that I learned of your participation” with Szocs and Vona in a ceremony honoring “a fascist ideologue of the Horthy and Szalasi regimes”.
Continue reading at Elie Wiesel Cons The World