Here is a bit of advice to politicians: before making speeches about any groups you oppose, check your genealogy.
One of the leaders of Hungary's Jobbik Party, which the Anti-Defamation League says is one of the few political parties in Europe to overtly campaign with anti-Semitic materials, has discovered that he is himself a Jew.
The Associated Press says Csanad Szegedi had in the past railed about the "Jewishness" of the political class. He also reportedly has made many anti-Jewish remarks in his public speeches. Szegedi has been a fast--rising member of the ultra-right-wing Jobbik Party. He became one of its most vocal and visible members, and a pillar of the party leadership. Since 2009, he has served in the European Parliament in Brussels as one of the party's three EU lawmakers, a position he says he wants to keep.
Szegedi recently was informed that his grandparents were Jewish but had kept that fact a secret from their children and grandchildren when Jews were being persecuted during Hungary's decades of communist rule that ended in 1990. Szegedi's grandmother survived Auschwitz and his grandfather survived labor camps.
Szegedi has now conceded that his mother was a Jew. According to Jewish law, that makes Szegedi Jewish as well, even though he doesn't practice the faith.
He has now resigned his membership in the Jobbik Party. He also has had a long conversation with his grandmother, who spoke about her family's past as Orthodox Jews.
You can read more in an article in the New York Times at http://goo.gl/yigFZ.
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