Anti-Nazi angerof Nobel laureate

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel has said he is “repudiating” a Hungarian government award he received in 2004 because top officials in Budapest attended a ceremony for a Nazi sympathiser.

The 83-year-old Holocaust survivor and writer, whose parents were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz by wartime Hungarian officials, said yesterday he had written a letter to the speaker of the Hungarian parliament, Laszlo Kover, rejecting an award granted in 2004 by Hungary’s president.

New York-based Wiesel said it was “outrageous” that the speaker participated in a 27 May ceremony honouring Second World War parliament member Jozsef Nyiro.

Wiesel called Nyiro “a fascist ideologue”.