Crisis of Conscience: Anti-Semite Learns He's a Jew

CBN ^ | August 07, 2013 | Dale Hurd

[xzins]

BUDAPEST, Hungary -- What do you do when you learn you are not the person you thought you were, when you learn you are the very thing you hated?

It was a question Csanad Szegedi was confronted with -- one that led to a remarkable transformation.

Szegedi was once a rising star in Hungary's third largest and most controversial political parties, Jobbik. Jobbik has been labeled fascist and anti-Semitic.

Its leader once asked for a list of all the Jews in Hungarian government. And Szegedi, still in his 20s, was on a trajectory to lead the party someday.

"I joined Jobbik in 2003, when the party foundations were being built," he told CBN News. "I was a member for 9 years. I was vice president for 6 years and I have served in the European parliament since 2009."

Szegedi was also branded an anti-Semite, although he told CBN News that when he joined Jobbik, "I was kind of indifferent toward Jews."

"I didn't care about Jews," he said. "I didn't care about the Holocaust. I didn't consider the Holocaust as a tragedy for the Hungarian people."

Szegedi's Damascus Road

But still, Szegedi was a leader in a major anti-Semitic party, and his public statements showed that, at the very least, he didn't like Jews and was suspicious of them.

But that would all change when Szegedi learned something about himself that would turn his world upside down: Szegedi discovered he was a Jew.

When rumors of his Jewish ancestry started swirling on the Internet, Szegedi went to talk to his 94-year-old grandmother, who he never knew was Jewish.

"She opened up and she talked about her life and how she was sent to Auschwitz and how our family was annihilated," he recalled. "I was shocked. First of all because I realized the Holocaust really happened."

At first, Szegedi tried to hide his Jewishness and act like nothing had happened. But he realized he couldn't stay in Jobbik.

"It started such a crisis in my consciousness," he told CBN News. "I realized I can't take part in any organization that has anything to do with anti-Semitism. And after my Jewish origins were disclosed, they really didn't want to see me in the party anymore."

A Spiritual 'Leper'

So what do you do when you discover you are one of the very things you hated? Szegedi decided to change.

He contacted local Rabbi Schlomo Koves, who first thought it was a joke.

"When I first met with Csanad, I had very, very mixed feelings because on one hand I was sitting across from a member of the Jobbik party, which has extreme anti-Semitic views," Rabbi Koves told CBN News.

"But on the other hand, I was sitting across from a broken person who has realized what he has done and has come to a situation where he figured he had to change but he didn't know how to change," he said.

Szegedi started attending synagogue and jokes that he was treated by some members "like a leper."

"It was very interesting to see how other people viewed it and some stepped back," Rabbi Koves said. "They were shocked."

But Szegedi started taking classes at the synagogue, learning Hebrew and the meaning of kosher and Shabbat. He said his life has completely changed.

"It's changed everything. It's like being re-born, and the changes in my life are still happening," he said. "I had this set value system that I had to change completely. I had had this value system until I was 30 and I had to admit that it was all wrong and to find the will to change."

Visiting Israel

He also became a politician without a party and has continued to serve in the European parliament as an independent.

"As a politician, now I want to defend human rights for everyone," Szegedi explained. "I am aware of my responsibility and I know I will have to make it right in the future."

One of the high points of his new life was visiting Israel with his wife and visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and the Western Wall.

"When I landed in Israel, airport security asked me a lot of questions, and when the guard asked me, 'Are you a Jew?' Then for the first time in my life, I could say, 'Yes,'" Szegedi recalled.

"Just to feel like you are on the right way spiritually, and you can get closer to God," he continued. "It's a whole new feeling for me, that I am doing the right thing."

"Since then, my life has been full of incredible miracles," he said. "But I believe everyone who chooses the way of God sees miracles."

[xzins]

But still, Szegedi was a leader in a major anti-Semitic party, and his public statements showed that, at the very least, he didn't like Jews and was suspicious of them.

But that would all change when Szegedi learned something about himself that would turn his world upside down: Szegedi discovered he was a Jew.

When rumors of his Jewish ancestry started swirling on the Internet, Szegedi went to talk to his 94-year-old grandmother, who he never knew was Jewish.

"She opened up and she talked about her life and how she was sent to Auschwitz and how our family was annihilated," he recalled. "I was shocked. First of all because I realized the Holocaust really happened."

[2banana]

Wasn’t Hitler part Jewish?

What is it with Europeans? They have muslims slitting their throats and creating infidel no-go zones and they hate some peaceful Jews baking knishes...

[NonValueAdded]

Parallel to Paul the Apostle?

[DoughtyOne]

Better get out there and hang that monkey right now!

LOL

[xzins]

I don’t know if the Hitler thing is true, folk legend, or carefully planted propaganda by the allies during WWII.

I don’t know how to find out, either.

[DoughtyOne]

Oh but you don’t understand. It’s Israel that has so mistreated these people, that they have to lash out.

Innocent terrorists. Evil Jews...

/s mindset

[xzins]

Just wondering...isn’t George Soros an Hungarian Jew from the concentration camps who turned on his people?

He could be responsible for the deaths of this guy’s family.

[Figment]

Is it anything like Chapells “Black , White Supremicist” ?

[2ndDivisionVet]

Many of Hitler's top lieutenants were almost certainly Jewish. Hitler himself might be a Rothschild, which would make him a Hebrew.

[goodwithagun]

A real life Clayton Bigsby!

[sport]

I heard of spanking the monkey but I never heard of hanging the monkey.

[xzins]

Yep. Obviously a spy.

[DoughtyOne]

It had been my take that he did this.  There are some concerns out there that argue differently with some reasonable sounding rebuttles.  I'm more or less up in the air on it right now.

Soros has enough dough to be able to spin this just about any way he likes.  I don't know the real truth of the matter.  As I said up front, it had been my take he was involved in this.

Was he old enough.  Was he the real person doing things?  Was he sympathetic to it if not actually doing it himself?

Can't say for absolute sure.


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[DoughtyOne]

Anti Semites are known to call Jews monkeys.

Thus the reference to him hurriedly hanging himself, since he’s Jewish.

[DoughtyOne]

I was referencing him hanging himself, since anti-Semites often refer to Jews as monkeys.

[vbmoneyspender]

What do you do when you learn you are not the person you thought you were, when you learn you are the very thing you hated?

Wasn't this a Twilight Zone episode?

[sport]

O.K. I did not know that.

[donmeaker]

His nephew, one Patrick Stuart-Huston (formerly Patrick Hitler) ate at a restaurant, and left behind his napkin. A person interested in such things took up the napkin and had the DNA analyzed. It had Jewish and Berber markers in the DNA.

Hitler’s father was the son of Maria Schickelgruber, who had worked as a domestic for the family of Leopold Frankenburger, a Jew. It was suggested that Hitler was the natural son of Leopold Frankenburger.

Hitler’s commander in WWI was a Jew. He survived WWII and asserted that Hitler had only one testicle.

Hitler had SS#1. His driver/bodyguard and friend Emil Maurice had SS#2. Himmler had #5.

Himmler’s investigations found that Maurice was Jewish. Hitler refused to drum him out of the SS, perhaps because Hitler wanted at least one friend in the world, perhaps because he knew that Himmler would use it as a precedent.

[faithhopecharity]

Note however that Paul the Apostle spent considerable effort to teach his non-Jewish followers to respect Jews and their faith practices, see especially Romans 9 thru 11 inclusive (which include the information that God has never abandoned His Jewish People, notwithstanding all their historical shortcomings, and that all of them will be saved.

How much a misunderstanding or misreading of Paul may have contributed to anti- Semitism in years past, is discussable, but it really doesn’t appear very accurate to lay the blame on Paul himself.

[Revolting cat!]

Imagine if each one of us learned that he is an Indonesian Kenyan without a birth certificate!