Leaders of Hungary's Jewish community have called on the country's Jewish residents to raise their alert level ahead of the upcoming March 15 national holiday out of concern that right-wing extremists would use the occasion to stage anti-Semitic demonstrations, Eran Elbaz, the director of the Jewish Agency in Eastern Europe, told the Jerusalem Post on Thursday afternoon.

However, Elbaz downplayed remarks by Budapest's Jewish community president Earl Peter Fredmayer, who had urged the country's Jewish residents to leave, during an earlier interview on Army Radio.

Fredmayer had said that community officials were afraid that the anti-Semitic nationalists who generally demonstrate during national holidays would try to attack Jews and/or Jewish institutions on the day.

But Elbaz told the Post that Fredmayer's call on Jews to leave was meant "as a joke," adding, however, that "in every joke there is an element of truth. The goal of the comment was just to draw attention to the occasion."

Earlier Thursday, Tamir Glazer, a medical student in Budapest, told Army Radio that a permanent protest against foreigners was set up across from the parliament building and that extremists were signing subway commuters on an anti-Semitic petition. The exact demands of the petition were unspecified.

Jews were not the only group in the city concerned about the anti-Semitism, Glazer continued. Left-wing parties, including the ruling Socialist-Free Democrats coalition, have expressed concern over rising right-wing extremism. The group behind the recent wave of anti-Semitic activity talks about the "greater Hungary" and seeks to create a "great Hungary of Hungarians." The group includes smaller neo-Nazi factions.

"[They] spray-painted a swastika and an SS symbol below my house," said Glazer, who lives some 20 minutes from the parliament building. "It was six months ago, and no one has bothered to remove it."

According to Glazer, "Jews know not to leave the house."

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