Hungarian extreme-right Jobbik party manifestation in Budapest. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Nearly 1,000 protestors took to the streets in Budapest to decry the far-right Jobbik party’s unveiling of a statue of Hungarian wartime leader and Nazi collaborator Miklos Horthy, Reuters reported.

The third-largest party in Hungary, Jobbik’s leaders have stoked extremism anti-Semitism in Hungary, often denigrating Jews and Israel in speeches.

“It is a historical travesty to publicly honor a man who introduced anti-Jewish laws in 1938, who sided with Adolf Hitler before and during World War II and who did nothing to prevent the murder of Hungarian Jewry,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said in a statement.

Horthy, who ruled Hungary from 1920-1944, helped the Nazis to deport more than 437,000 Jews to death camps in less than two months in 1944, according to the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Centre.