Rewriting history?

This is supposed to be a monument to victims of the Nazis during World War II. However as I understand it, it was erected by the current government without consultation and is supposed to show the Nazis (the eagle) swooping down on and occupying a defenceless Hungary (the angel) in 1944 and the subsequent killing of some 600,000 Hungarian Jews in the latter months of the war. The reality is that Hungary was an ally of the Nazis during World War II, the Germans were welcomed into Hungary in 1944 and the Nazis even left the Hungarian authorities in place.

Hungarian Nazis had been passing anti-Jewish laws for years, seizing property, torturing and killing Jews by the thousands and the Germans arriving in 1944 did not start an anti-Semitic purge, it merely carried on. The Hungarian Nazis, who were called Arrow Cross rounded up Jews and sent them to the death camps with incredible speed before the Soviet army arrived. They were also responsible for unspeakable crimes against people both before and after the Germans moved in to Hungary. Including mass shootings of Jews on the banks of the Danube and then throwing the bodies into the river.

Many people have left messages in front of the monument condemning it as a lie and an attempt to rewrite history.

Earlier in the day we visited the Dohány Street Synagogue and the small museum in the basement which has been established to show the truth of what happened and to fight against the current attempts to hide it. It is well worth a visit if you are in Budapest.