The Great Synagogue of Budapest, also known as the Dohány Street Synagogue (after the street that passes by its façade), is billed as the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second-largest in the world (after the Temple Emanu-El in New York City). It was highly recommended in our guide book for its religious significance, its beauty and its history. We found it to be within walking distance of our hotel, so after breakfast, despite the weather being somewhat threatening, we headed over on foot.

The synagogue was built between 1854 and 1859, in what's known as the Moorish Revival style. Dohány Street, on which it was built, was considered to be the border of Budapest's Jewish Quarter at the time. Many Jews still live on the street, which is also home to some additional architecture of interest. But we didn't spend much time looking at the local buildings, as rain was beginning to fall. We hastily paid our admission fee and entered the building.

The synagogue grounds are also home to a number of other attractions, including the Hungarian Jewish Museum, a cemetery, a building called the Heroes' Temple, and a Memorial Park. We didn't visit the museum (it was very crowded) or the temple (it didn't seem to be open), but we did visit the other places, beginning with the synagogue itself.

We'd never been inside a working synagogue before, and weren't sure quite what to expect. Our experiences with places of worship had almost entirely been with Christian churches and cathedrals, and as it turned out the synagogue had both similarities and differences. This particular synagogue was a Neolog (as opposed to an Orthodox) synagogue, and some of its features apparently differ from those of an Orthodox synagogue.

We ran into the first difference from a cathedral immediately – while Christian churches require that you remove any headwear you might be wearing, the synagogue had the opposite requirement: headwear was mandatory for men, but apparently not for women. The synagogue supplied white paper yarmulkes for those who needed them, but they seemed OK with the baseball-style cap I was already wearing.

The inside of the synagogue was surprisingly churchlike. There was an altar at the front, with many rows of pews facing it. There were pulpits on both sides, toward the front, and there were stained-glass windows. The altar was flanked by organ pipes, and there was even an ornate dome above it. There were two levels of balconies along both the left and right sides of the synagogue, a feature not unknown to large Christian churches. On the other hand, as would be expected, there weren't any crosses or representations of Jesuses or Virgins or saints anywhere. There were some stars of David, but not many, and they weren't particularly prominent. The decorations most indicative of the building being a synagogue were some Hebrew inscriptions. As promised in the guidebook, all of this was gorgeous.





I'm not sure how typical this layout was for a synagogue (apparently there is a fair amount of variability), but there were some differences from what one might expect in a traditional Orthodox synagogue. In both types of synagogues, attention of the attendees is focused on an area where someone (a rabbi, I would guess) would be speaking or reading during a service. In the Great Synagogue, this area is at one end of the building, as it would be in a typical Christian church, but in a traditional synagogue, this area might instead be in the center of the building, which would be surrounded by seating (so everyone can see and hear better, which would be difficult for someone at the opposite end of a large building). In all synagogues there is a container called the ark, in which the scrolls of the Torah are kept (the Torah consists of five books of the Old Testament – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), and the ark is almost always placed on a wall, typically the wall facing Jerusalem. In a synagogue like the Great Synagogue, the ark is usually located behind the speaker's platform. In the case of the Great Synagogue, more than the usual number of scrolls are stored, as scrolls were collected here from some of the Hungarian synagogues that were destroyed during the Holocaust.

During ceremonies in a synagogue, men and women are typically kept away from each other (apparently men are distractible creatures). In some synagogues there is a curtain that separates the men's section from the women's section, but in others, like the Great Synagogue, the women are relegated to balconies.

Exiting the synagogue building took us to a courtyard surrounded on three sides by the synagogue, the museum and the Heroes' Temple. The courtyard itself was roped off from visitors, who could view it from an arcade along the side of the synagogue. The courtyard appeared fairly ordinary, except for many stones engraved with names of people, mostly leaning against the borders of planters. It was almost like a number of headstones had been prepared and were awaiting delivery to a cemetery. But a little investigation revealed two important facts. First, the courtyard was the cemetery. And second, the headstones, while numerous, represented a small fraction of the headstones which could justifiably have been placed there. An additional fact is at first somewhat puzzling – unlike the situation for Christian churches, the placement of a cemetery adjacent to a synagogue is highly unusual, and in fact there are rules explicitly forbidding this practice. To understand this exception, one must know a few things about events which occurred during the fall and winter of 1944-45.

In late 1944, the Germans, with whom the Hungarians were allied, had a lot of things other than Hungary on their mind, and with the Soviet Red Army approaching, the Hungarian government had become unstable and vulnerable. On October 15 there was a coup in which the government was taken over by a radically anti-Semitic group called the Arrow Cross, or Nyilas. Tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews were exported by this new government to the hospitality of the Germans, either through forced marches to the Austrian border, or through direct deportation to places like the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. In Budapest, an area was set aside and walled off as a Jewish ghetto, with 55,000 people crowded into it as of November. Over time, others were forcibly moved to the ghetto, until the number swelled to 70,000 as of January 1945. The ghetto's occupants were not well taken care of by their captors – shortages of food and medicine, and the harshness of the winter of 1944-45 contributed to the deaths of thousands. Also, the Nyilas dropped by frequently to conduct raids and mass executions. Conditions made it impossible to bury so many, and unburied corpses accumulated on the streets (and also in the courtyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue). The Soviet Army liberated the ghetto on January 18, to the obvious relief of the survivors, but found it necessary to commence mass burials immediately. Their gruesome task was completed by mid-February, with the victims being buried in three principal locations – two cemeteries in the ghetto area, and the courtyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue. It's estimated that more than 2,000 victims were buried in the courtyard. It's not known exactly who was buried in each of the three locations, but over the years relatives have brought headstones to the synagogue, and many of them have been placed in the courtyard. And while there is a rule that cemeteries should not be placed next to synagogues, there is a stricter rule that human remains, once buried, should not be moved.

Situated at the north end of the courtyard is the Heroes' Temple, a domed, fortress-like building that was erected in 1931 as a memorial to Hungarian Jews who gave their lives fighting for their country in World War I (as with World War II, on the same side as the Germans). It was not open for visitors when we were there.

One might think that Jews fighting and dying for Hungary would make them popular among the Hungarian population. This turned out not to be the case, as evidenced by the final point of interest on the synagogue grounds, the Raoul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park. Between the wars, as in much of Europe, Hungarian Jews had greater representation in the ranks of many highly-paid professions (e.g. finance, law, and medicine, where the practitioners were more than 50% Jewish) than they did in the general population (of which they were about 5%). This led to resentment among the non-Jewish citizenry, which spread to the government, which began passing anti-Jewish laws in 1938. "Over-representation" of Jews in certain professions was addressed not by seeking out any unfair barriers to others, or by incentivizing other groups to pursue those professions more energetically, but by forcibly throwing many Jews out of their jobs. In the ensuing months and years persecution of Jews increased, and in 1941 thousands of foreign Jews (which included many Hungarian Jews who couldn’t pull their proof of citizenship together) were deported. The deportees mostly ended up in places where German forces could easily pick them up, and many thousands were either sent to concentration camps or massacred outright, via Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units. Persecution continued in Hungary, often at the hands of the Hungarian Army or police forces, but the Hungarian government did draw one line they wouldn't go past: they would not deport Hungarian Jews to the Nazi extermination camps (e.g. Auschwitz), despite pressure from the Germans. But eventually the Germans lost patience, and in March of 1944 they replaced the Hungarian government with one that was more accommodating. Preparations proceeded apace, and by May trains were shipping 12,000 Jews to Auschwitz daily, with 90% exterminated on arrival. The Hungarian police force was quite efficient, drawing the admiration of Adolf Eichmann, who was supervising the operation. Eventually a combination of the Allies' Normandy invasion, international (and papal) pressure and an attempt on Hitler's life caused the deportations to start slowing down in July, and they finally stopped in August. But only after hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews had fallen victim to the extermination machine. It is estimated that about one-third of all those murdered at Auschwitz came from Hungary.

The Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park is not very big, and seems inadequate to address such a horrific chapter of Hungarian history. But it's difficult to imagine a commemoration that would seem sufficient. Looking around at the various memorials, we were struck by the presence of pebbles throughout the park. Apparently each pebble represents a prayer.

One monument, surrounded by a great mass of pebbles, is dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg, after whom the park is named. Wallenberg was a special envoy to Hungary from Sweden who is credited with saving the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews. He did this by issuing "protective passports" to Jews which identified them as Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation (Sweden was officially a neutral country during the war), making them immune to deportation. This wasn't legal, but the passports looked official and he sometimes added bribes for certain key officials. He arrived in Budapest in July of 1944, too late to save many, but it's clear that he did everything he could think of to accomplish his purpose. For instance, he would actually intercept trainloads of deportees before they departed, handing the occupants passports through the windows and telling them to leave the railroad cars and go to Swedish-flagged automobiles that were waiting for them. Guards would yell at him to leave and shoot over his head, but he wouldn't quit until running out of passports. He rented several buildings to house all of the new "Swedish citizens" until they could be taken out of the country, saying the buildings were protected by diplomatic immunity. Two days before the Soviet occupation of the city, Wallenberg issued a note to the remaining German officials warning them of possible war crime prosecution if they executed a plan they had to blow up the entire Jewish ghetto (with 70,000 people in it); this may have kept the plan from being carried out.

While the Wallenberg memorial looks something like a grave, Wallenberg isn't in it. On January 17, 1945, he was summoned to the Soviet general's headquarters, and he was never seen again. It seems he was suspected by the Soviets of being a spy - there are sketchy claims from the Russians about his death while in their captivity, and plausible counter-claims that he was seen alive after this time. In 1989 some of his personal belongings were returned to his family, the Soviets saying that they were found in a storeroom. Wallenberg's ultimate fate seems to be a mystery that may never be solved. At any rate, he has a well-earned memorial in Budapest. Also inscribed on the memorial are several additional names belonging to others who similarly rescued condemned Hungarian Jews at great personal risk.

The most conspicuous memorial in the park is a sculpture called the Tree of Life, which looks like a metallic weeping willow. Its metal leaves all have names of Hungarian Holocaust victims on them.

Having had our fill of the Holocaust for one day, we left the park, retraced our steps through the cemetery and the synagogue, and ended up back on Dohány Street.

We needed something to take our minds off the profound sadness to be found at a Holocaust memorial, and decided that the Hungarian Parliament would be just the thing. We found a Metro stop and a train that would take us there. Continue to the next page to see how successful we were.