The Athina Németh case is a gift to Miklós Kásler and the Orbán government

The most disputed decision of the government during the COVID-19 pandemic was the order of Miklós Kásler, the minister in charge of healthcare, that forced hospitals nationwide to make 36,000 beds available for potential virus patients. The consensus at the time was that, even if Hungary is hit extraordinarily hard, it would be unlikely that 36,000 patients would need hospital care. There was a general outcry over the inhumane treatment of extremely ill patients, whom hospitals sent home where no proper care was available.

It was under these circumstances that a woman who calls herself Athina Németh announced on Facebook that she was willing to look after patients who had been dismissed from hospitals. About a week later, on April 22, she said that she was already taking care of nine patients. Two days later, on April 24, she told Pesti Hírlap that nine of her ten patients had died. Her followers on Facebook were horrified. On April 27, she was invited by Klub Rádió’s “Reggeli gyors” (Morning express) for an interview, which Tímea Szabó, leader of Párbeszéd, must have heard because in the afternoon session of parliament that day she talked about Ms Németh’s story. Németh even got in touch with a journalist from The Financial Times.

Somewhat later, MSZP’s Lajos Korózs decided to use the case for political purposes. I have always considered Korózs a decent politician, especially active in social issues, with pensioners, and the poor. He seems to have been the one who came up with the idea of getting touch with Athina Németh. He was so impressed that, with the approval of the party brass, he set out to create a video interview with her. He didn’t act alone. MSZP MEP István Ujhelyi’s chief-of-cabinet, Tamás Lajos Szalay, who earlier had worked for Népszava and Népszabadság, made the video. Although one must handle information coming from Hír TV with a large dose of skepticism, it seems that even Bertalan Tóth, the chairman of the party, approved of the plan. As Korózs later admitted, they didn’t spend much time finding out anything about Athina Németh.

I encountered Athina Németh on György Bolgár’s “Let’s talk it over” program and had an uneasy feeling about her on the basis of her speaking style and tone. Moreover, she made truly wild claims about the healthcare situation in Hungary. Although I have been a persistent critic of the Hungarian medical community, I couldn’t imagine that any doctor could be so ignorant and negligent that he would remove fatty tissue from the breast of one of his patients instead of the tumor. My discomfort was magnified when I later had the opportunity to see Korózs and Athina Németh in person on ATV’s “Egyenes beszéd.” By then, it was evident that MSZP had been conned by a scoundrel, that she was a fraud from the get-go. Right there, during this interview, Korózs should have distanced himself from the whole affair, especially since earlier the party had opted to remove the video interview with Németh from its website. The woman was unable to answer any of Egon Rónay’s questions, and Korózs’s explanation for the removal of the video was pitiful. Korózs eventually became unreachable, while MSZP promised an “internal investigation.”

Lajos Korózs and Athina Németh ON ATV’s “Egyenes beszéd”

We don’t really know who Athina Németh is; we may never know. We do know, however, that she never worked for the National Ambulance Service. It is also doubtful, as she claimed, that she spent 43 years as a paramedic. It is certain that she couldn’t have worked at a private ambulance service in the 1970s because there was no such thing in those days. As she was running out of tall tales, Németh resorted to a new story about an alleged name change in 2002 and claimed that she received her training in Germany, after which she worked for the Szamaritánus Mentőszolgálat (Samaritan Ambulance Service). But all that the spokesman of that ambulance service could confirm, when asked by RTL Klub, was that at the ambulance station they have a temporary hotel where Athina lived for a few years. Once the Samaritan story was unmasked, Németh came up with the name of another private ambulance service, AMS Assistance, where she said she worked, which also turned out to be a lie. When challenged, she accused the firm of employing her without paying social security taxes. AMS Assistance had enough. The firm is going to sue her.

What is much more dangerous for Németh than AMS’s suit is that the ministry of human resources  filed a complaint against her for scaremongering, and the police are investigating her case. If found guilty, she could receive a jail sentence of up to five years.

The media has spent an inordinate amount of time on Németh’s fabrication of her background while we know practically nothing about the fate of her ten patients, nine of whom allegedly died. The only exception is one person whose daughter, Lilla Szeleczki, came forward and was shown on Korózs’s video. The case ended up at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, whose co-chair stressed that “whether Athina Németh was a paramedic or not, the question is whether it is all right to release someone from the hospital in such a state as the patient was.” About the other eight presumably by now dead people, we know nothing because it seems that their relatives haven’t come forth. It is unlikely that the Hungarian police who are charged with investigating the case will try to find out the veracity of her claims about the patients. Moreover, I’m not even sure whether it is their job. One thing is sure, however. Korózs’s handling of this case did harm not only to his own party but to the opposition as a whole, which works so hard to survive in a country where democracy is already dead.

June 14, 2020