Effective October 31, the deputy mayor of Ózd, Péter Barnabás Farkas, will have resigned, following two Nazi photos published of him in a Holocaust museum in Katowice. In the first, Farkas said he was actually just waving, while the second blatantly evoked Nazis. Meanwhile, another picture taken on the same occasion has come to the fore, where the former deputy mayor even evokes Adolf Hitler’s mustache with his fingers. The former and now-resigned deputy mayors photographed each other three years ago, Telex writes.
Due to the events, the municipality would have held a vote on Farkas’ mandate, but he has now resigned from his position as deputy mayor before the vote. Negotiations on the identity of the new deputy mayor will thus begin, although Dávid Janiczak, the 34-year-old Jobbik mayor who has ruled the city for seven years, was not able to give any details about this.
According to him, the photo taken was „an unacceptable disgrace, but it is even more disgraceful that it was the photographer who launched or supported all of this.”
According to Janiczak, if the photographer thought the images taken in 2018 were unacceptable, then why did he wait three years and throw them in just before the opposition pre-election. (Péter Barnabás Farkas was the Jobbik candidate in the pre-election with the support of DK, but he lost after the pictures were made public.)
“Publishing them three years later makes you question what the real motivation was,” he noted. According to him, there appears to be some personal interest at play in the background, given the timing, aside from the fact that the act itself was clearly unacceptable.
According to Janiczak, the photo does not reflect the personal worldview of the museologist, folk cultivator Farkas, calling it “an unfortunate act” resulting from a photo shoot “he shouldn’t have” been a part of.
Regarding the screening process for a new deputy mayor, Janiczak said “there is no man who is flawless, we are all mortal people, everyone has something that can be blown out of proportion in their past. A consensus candidate must be found for the position of deputy mayor.” He also said that there is no specific date for this, but the regulation states that a deputy mayor must be elected from among the members of the general assembly.
Janiczak admits that given the origins of Jobbik, there may be extremists who previously thought they had found their ideological home in Jobbik. “But Jobbik has cleaned up, threw out the extremists,” he said, reiterating that in the case of the two former deputy mayors, “at least Farkas,” his waving arm in the photo was not meant to express antisemitic views.
Farkas apologized for the photos. “There was no malicious intent or mockery that I intended to offend Jewry,” he said in a video he made in front of the Holocaust Museum on Páva Street. „Regarding the photos that came out a couple of days ago, I’d like to say I’m deeply sorry.” Farkas visited the museum at the request of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities (Mazsihisz). “I faced all the horrors that were committed against a people,” the now-former deputy mayor said after visiting the museum. „Crimes against Jewry must never be repeated.”