(JTA) – Efforts are underway to try to prevent Hungary’s far-right Jobbik Party from holding a Valentine’s Day political rally in a former synagogue.

Jobbik has booked the former synagogue in Esztergom, north of Budapest, for a rally as part of its campaign ahead of elections in April. The synagogue is operated by the local government as a cultural and meeting center.

Jobbik, whose ultra-nationalist platform is laced with anti-Semitism and anti-Roma policy, became the third largest party in Hungary following the 2010 elections, and currently holds 43 out of 386 seats in Parliament.

Last week, the chairman of the local chapter of the opposition Hungarian Socialist Party sent an open letter to Eztergom’s mayor urging her to bar the rally from the synagogue.

“The choice of location for the event is an unworthy, ugly, and cynical desecration of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the sentiments of the survivors,” he wrote.

On Wednesday, the Jerusalem Post quoted the president of Mazsihisz, Hungary’s official Jewish umbrella organization, as saying that if the rally went ahead, Mazsihisz “and Jewish civil organizations will protest and physically hinder the Jobbik rally on the spot.”