Balint Homan played a role in drafting anti-Jewish laws during World War Two. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Ira Forman, the official U.S. government envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, on Sunday expressed outrage over plans in Hungary to erect a statue of Balint Homan, a Holocaust-era antisemitic historian and politician.

“From the U.S. government perspective we feel very strongly that history and the damage that this man did to Hungarian citizens who happened to be Jewish cannot be ignored, and to put up that statue seems incomprehensible,” Forman told Reuters.

Through the statue, Hungary’s Balint Homan Foundation is honoring a man known for creating anti-Jewish laws and being a Nazi supporter.

“We think it’s important to know what this man did to Hungarian citizens in the 1930s and 40s, taking away their citizenship rights and then arguing for them to be deported, which eventually meant going to Auschwitz,” Forman said.

“Honoring a man like that—we’re shocked by it,” he added.