Balint Homan. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Hungary has dropped plans to erect a statue honoring Balint Homan, a World War II-era government minister who was behind many of the country’s anti-Jewish laws.

The Hungarian news agency MTI reported Friday that the private Balint Homan Foundation in Szekesfehervar has dropped the plans for the statue, which sought to honor him for his role as a historian and former minister, Reuters reported.

The U.S. special envoy against anti-Semitism, Ira Forman, had called the planned statue “incomprehensible,” while Jewish groups also slammed the move.

“It is quite outrageous that the Hungarian taxpayer should fund a monument for a man who was not only an anti-Semite, a key figure in the persecution of Hungarian Jews before and during World War II, and a supporter of Nazi Germany and the fascist Arrow Cross regime in 1944, but who also remained unrepentant until his death,” World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder had said.

Homan served as a minister to several Hungarian governments during the 1930s and 40s, and played a significant role in the drafting of anti-Jewish laws in Hungary in the late 1930s as well as in the deportation of 430,000 Jews to Auschwitz.