Director with close ties to Orbán government upset over EU leaders not attending Gorbachev funeral

On Monday, Dr. Mária Schmidt, the director of the House of Terror Museum, wrote an indignant post on Facebook in all caps under entitled "Ungrateful, shameless people". In her opinion it was a disgrace that apart from Viktor Orbán, no foreign state leader attended Mikhail Gorbachev's funeral on Saturday.

Dr Mária Schmidt is a Hungarian historian, university lecturer and author of several books. She has had very close ties to the Orbán government and is the Director-General of the state-funded 21st Century Institute and the House of Terror Museum in Budapest. She has come under severe criticism in scholarly circles both in Hungary and abroad and has been accused of being a “Holocaust revisionist”.

She further adds in her post:

"It is striking that there was not a single German politician to express their gratitude to Gorbachev, without whom their country would still be divided"

"The day of the funeral made it clear that the new religion of the Germans is cowardice. Their leaders are cowards, ungrateful, uncultured, and disrespectful. They are detached from European culture, they are faceless nobodies. And some Germans not only tolerate them, but they follow them. So don't make gestures or do favours for the Germans, because they don't appreciate them and won't return them!" – the post of the director of the House of Terror concluded.

The funeral of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, was held in Moscow on Saturday, with foreign newspapers describing the event as low-key since Moscow had banned hundreds of foreign officials from entering Russia in retaliation for Western sanctions, so foreign prominent figures and European and Western leaders were not present. One exception was John Sullivan, the US ambassador to Russia.

One of the most prominent guests to pay his respects at Gorbachev's funeral was Viktor Orbán, who was accompanied to Moscow by MEP Tamás Deutsch, Mária Schmidt and Balázs Orbán (the PM's political director) among others.