IS BUDAPEST "Europe's capital of anti-Semitism"? Der Spiegel appears to think so. That is the headline for a lengthy article by Eric Follath, which reports that the Hungarian capital is “experiencing a rebirth of anti-Semitism” and that Jews are “being openly intimidated”. The article has triggered an angry reaction here. Writing in HVG, a liberal weekly, János Pelle described [link in Hungarian] the article as “hateful”.

Anti-Semitism remains the most sensitive issue in Hungarian public life. Certainly, there are worrying political trends. The far-right Jobbik party won 16.7 per cent of the votes in April's election, campaigning against what it called "Gypsy crime" and Israeli investors it said were "colonising" the country (unlike, it seems, their Austrian or German counterparts). Jobbik denies it is anti-Semitic, although the party is certainly no friend of Hungary's Jews. For his Spiegel piece, Mr Follath interviewed György Konrád, a Holocaust survivor and one of Hungary's greatest writers, and Gáspár Miklós Tamás, a philosopher. Both told alarming stories about groups of men in black uniforms and boots, marching in formation and shouting threats; these were presumably members of Jobbik's uniformed wing, the now-banned Magyar Gárda (Hungarian Guard).

Follath also quotes from a Die Weltinterview [link in German] with the Hungarian Nobel literature laureate Imre Kertész, published last year. Mr Kertesz, who lives in Berlin, says, of Hungary's past, “Nothing has been worked through, everything is painted over with pretty colours. Budapest is a city without a memory.” Mr Kertész survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald. But that does not mean he is always right. There is no shortage of memories in Budapest. The city is home to one of the world's best Holocaust museums, which opened in 2004, the only one of its kind in post-communist eastern Europe. Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated in Parliament each year.

Politicians from right, left and centre (although not Jobbik) join thousands of others along the banks of the Danube on the annual "March of the Living" (pictured), which remembers Holocaust victims. Small metal plaques mark the entrances of buildings throughout Budapest from where Jews were deported, detailing victims' names, ages and fates. Films by a new generation of young Jewish directors exploring the Holocaust and its legacy are shown on state television. Only last week, as I reported, the British embassy unveiled a plaque commemorating Raoul Wallenberg, the heroic Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in wartime Budapest.

Mr Follath also seeks to elide the difference between the governing centre-right party, Fidesz, and Jobbik, portraying them as two parts of a right-wing populist-nationalist continuum. It is true that Fidesz did court far-right voters, for a while. But times change, even in Budapest. Pál Schmitt, Hungary's president, recently told the UN General Assembly that the government plans to open a institute to promote tolerance, to be named after Tom Lantos, a late US congressman who was saved by Mr Wallenberg. Zsolt Semjén, a deputy prime minister, recently represented the government at the re-dedication of the Obuda synagogue in Budapest.

The problem with one-sided screeds like Mr Follath's is that they portray Jewish life here solely through the warped prism of anti-Semitism, rather than its much more complex, and healthy, reality. (France has a much better claim to be the epicentre of European anti-Semitism.) There are a dozen functioning synagogues in Budapest, an annual Jewish summer festival heavily promoted across the city and numerous cultural organisations. While Mr Follath found time during his reporting to meet Zsolt Várkonyi, a Jobbik spokesman, he does not appear to have met any Hungarian rabbis or representatives from Mazsihisz, the official Hungarian Jewish community organisation. Instead, there are some vague claims apparently gathered in a bar about elderly Jews keeping their bags packed, "just in case".