Auschwitz 'May not Reflect Real Facts' says Hungary's Far-Right Jobbik MP

An MP for the ultra-far right Jobbik party in Hungary has said that the Auschwitz concentration camp museum "may not reflect real facts".

During a discussion in parliament over a proposal to facilitate visits by teenagers to the former Nazi camp in Poland, Tamas Gaudi-Nagy said schools should not be "forced to take up such an expensive venture" for a site whose historical accuracy is, he believes, doubtful.

Jobbik is Hungary's third largest party and won 17 percent of the vote in the last elections (2010) with an anti-Semitic, anti-EU and anti-Roma agenda. Hungary has one of the largest Jewish populations in the EU.

Gaudi-Nagy's statements sparked criticism from the country's ruling Fidesz party. Its leader, Antal Rogan, said: "Nobody has the right to question the Holocaust, the suffering and death of millions of people."

Registered in 2003, Jobbik has become known for insulting Jews and the country's 700,000-strong Roma population. It founded the Hungarian Guard, an unarmed vigilante group which reminds many of far-right groups during World War II.

"We have an internal problem that is Gypsy crime and an external threat: the Jewish invasion," one of the group's leaders, Jozsef Inancsi, told Channel 4 News.

Hungary's Jewish watchdog on anti-Semitism, the Action and Protection Foundation (TEV), dubbed the party neo-Nazi.

Earlier in May, Jobbik staged a mass rally in Hungary's capital Budapest to protest against a meeting of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in the city.

Marton Gyongyosi, an outspoken Jobbik MP, told the rally that Hungary had become "subjugated to Zionism."

He famously spurred a controversy last year among Jewish organisations in the country after calling for a list of Jews who pose a "national security risk".

Anti-Semitism is a delicate issue in the country, given that between 500,000 and 600,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, according to the Holocaust memorial centre in Budapest. One in three Jews killed in Auschwitz were Hungarian nationals, according to some accounts.