FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011 file photo, Professor emeritus of City University of New York and Director of Rosenthal Institute Randolph L. Braham, left, jokes as he takes over the Medium Cross of the Order of the Republic of Hungary from Deputy State Secretary of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry Janos Hovari in the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest, Hungary. Holocaust survivor and historian Randolph L. Braham said Sunday he is returning a high state award to Hungary to protest what he says are government efforts to rewrite history and exonerate the country from its role in the Holocaust. Braham also asked the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest to remove his name from the BrahamTheque Information Center, which collects his research results and publications. Braham, born in Romania in 1922, said in an open letter addressed to executives of the memorial center that the "straw that broke the camel's back" leading to his decision was the government plan to erect a memorial commemorating the March 1944 invasion of Hungary by the Nazis. Braham said the memorial was "a cowardly attempt to detract attention from the Horthy regime's involvement in the destruction of the Jews and to homogenize the Holocaust with the 'suffering' of the Hungarians — a German occupation, as the record clearly shows, was not only unopposed but generally applauded." (AP Photo/MTI, Lajos Soos, file)
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