Day 11 - Thursday May 8, 2025 - Budapest Hungary Day 2

 

Wayne and I took our own walk this morning, about a 10 minute walk from the ship to The Shoe Memorial.  

The Shoes on the Danube Bank is a memorial erected on April 16, 2005.  It was  created to honur the Jews who were massacred by fascist antisemitic Hungarian militia belonging to the Arrow Cross Party during the World War II.  They were ordered to take off their shoes (shoes were valuable and could be stolen and resold by the militia after the massacre), and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away.   The memorial represents their shoes left behind on the bank. 

The shoes are all bronze sculptures and as you can see, flowers and Yartzeit candles are left.

The memorial speaks louder than words.  

Translated by Google translate 

Translated by Google translate 

After lunch I took a tour of the largest Jewish synogogue in Europe and the 3rd largest in the world.  It seats over 3,000 and they classify themselves as neo-log Jews a term I never heard,  (as opposed to Reform or Conservative or Orthodox). As our guide described the practices of the synogogue, it sounds to me like a hybrid of Conservative and Orthodox.  The women sit in the balcony and not on the main floor.  But the community interacts with others and doesn't close themselves off to other Jewish sects.

  

The synogogue was built about 1859 and Jews were not even welcome to live in Pest until approximately 1780 when a new ruler came to power.  Jews were welcome in Buda, and in those days, there was no bridges which connected Buda and Pest.

So 80 years after Jews were finally allowed to live in Pest (before then, they were not welcome) a synogogue was built.  It looks much like a Roman Catholic Church inside.  And, in some ways, when built, was more  palatable to the community at large.  There's a pulpit and the side pulpits I've only ever seen in a Catholic Church and an organ.

I'm not saying it's not a real synogogue at all,  I think I'm just saying that it was a sign of the times as to how it was built and that the architect/designer was Catholic.  It was a great step forward that a synogogue was even built and that there was finally a needed synogogue that was an amazing place for the Jews of the time and still exists.

Synogogue built in a Moorish style outside.

Translated by Google translate 

Note the organ pipes at top left and right.  Never saw this in a synogogue before today.

Never saw this kind of pulpit in a synogogue before today.

We went from the synogogue to the museum next door.  Our guide pointed out several items of importance.  

Sedat plate

A pocket Torah that survived the Holocaust 

Circumcision tools (ouch)

Looking at all the stained glass also made me think of Catholic Churches.  But these are all based on Moses.

We went from the museum into the mass burial area where more than 2,200 Jews were buried when the Russians liberated the Jewish ghetto in Pest.

Next to the burial garden, is the Tree of Life with names of Hungarian Jews killed in the Holocaust. 

We left the synogogue area and walked further into the a Jewish quarter also known as the Elizabeth or Sisi quarter.  We stopped at a restaurant, The Spinoza, for coffee and piece of Jewish Hungarian cake called Flodni, a layered cake with poppy seed, walnut and plum filling.  The taste reminded me of homentashen.

The rest of these pictures are of the Jewish quarter as we walked back to the bus.

Carl Lutz Memorial.  Dramatic sculpture depicting Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, who saved many Jews during the Holocaust. 

Stumbling blocks.  I've seen these in other countries as well. These were placed outside a house, embedded in the ground, with the names of the Jews who lived in those houses and did not survive the Holocaust.

Rumbach Street Synagogue seats 1,500 people.