The case of Ilaria Salis
Fascism, anti-fascism and the far right in government
In February 1945 the besieged SS garrison of Budapest along with Hungarian troops loyal to the fascist government of the Arrow Cross party, tried to break out of the city, now encircled by the Red Army. They got as far as the wooded hills on the Buda side of the Danube before being destroyed.
In the previous few weeks the Arrow Cross militia entered the Jewish ghetto in Budapest, rounding up the city’s surviving Jews then shooting them by the river’s edge and pushing their bodies into the water. Some 20,000 Jewish civilians - who had escaped Adolf Eichmann’s transports to Auschwitz the previous summer – were murdered.
So why am I telling you this now? Because my oldest friend, Rob, who now splits his time between Germany and Italy, was over on a visit, and he told me the story of Ilaria Salis - a primary school teacher from the city of Monza in Lombardy – who until last week was on trial in Budapest and whose case had left to a rift between the authoritarian nationalist government of Viktor Orban and the far right prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. It's a story about the past and the present and the way the one infects the other.
The Day of Honour
Some 20 years ago a neofascist group on the far fringes of Hungarian politics decided that February 11th – the day of the attempted break-out in 1945 – deserved commemoration. By the 2010s this had become an annual event called “The Day of Honour” and attracted neo-Nazis and fascists from all over Europe. There would be a march and rally with all the usual flags, shaven headed men in black uniforms, fascist salutes and speeches.
At the 2020 event, which was the 75th anniversary of the events in 1945 a Matthias Deyda, representing a German group called Die Rechte told his audience that “We have the same enemies today, like we did 75 years ago. The enemy isn’t named Muller or Mayer. No, our enemy is named Rothschild or Goldman and Sachs.” Not a few of those who heard him will have been involved in attacks on Jewish targets and immigrants in their home nations and in Hungary.
In 2019 reporters noted flags belonging to Combat 18 (the 1 stands for the letter A and the 8 for the letter H and you can work out the rest for yourself) and the presence of the ultra-violent Nordic Resistance Movement, who members had been involved in bomb attacks and murders of migrants in Scandinavia. The leader of the Hungarian group Legio Hungaria which helped organise the march in 2018, had once boasted that he was fighting for a world without Jews.
In 2022 the Hungarian authorities banned the march, but a related event – a “hike” taking the route that the SS and its allies had taken on the fringe of the city - was not prohibited and nor were concerts by neo-nazi rock bands.
Enter antifa
Nazi tourism begets its obvious antithesis – anti-nazi tourism. The sight of black-clad racists and anti-Semites openly parading not far from where the victims of their ideology were put to death is not an easy one to accept. For some activists opposing such abominations is a Lutherian necessity – what else can you do? I deeply sympathise with this impulse. If Combat 18 were to take it into their heads to march down my street I don’t think I’d just watch from a window.