Last week in this space, I wrote about the increasingly worrying state of affairs in Hungary, which prompted Freedom House to decry the "Putinization" of the country. I also mentioned an incident involving the attempted reburial of an ethnic Hungarian fascist—Joseph Nyiro—in Hungarian soil (Nyiro had been born in Transylvania, a piece of territory once part of Greater Hungary but which became eastern Romania after the first World War).  Now comes news that Romanian-born Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel, prompted by the Nyiro controversy, has decided to return a Hungarian state award he received 8 years ago. "It has become increasingly clear that Hungarian authorities are encouraging the whitewashing of tragic and criminal episodes in Hungary's past, namely the wartime Hungarian governments' involvement in the deportation and murder of hundreds of thousands of its Jewish citizens," he wrote. One hopes that saner heads in Budapest will heed these words.  

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