Budapest The Great Synagogue October 2015 Dohány Street Synagogue

I'm posting the blog about our October 2015 visit to The Great Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary. It's the largest synagogue in Europe.  During World War II, it was also the site of a mass murder of Hungarian Jews.  Many of the victims are buried in the Holocaust Memorial adjacent to the synagogue.

 The Great Synagogue in Budapest Hungary where we visited in October 2015

Name is also Dohány Street Synagogue 

Internet picture Dohány Street Synagogue

Jewish Museum

Aerial view of the Dohány Street Synagogue complex

The Jewish Museum was constructed on the plot where Theodor Herzl's two-story Classicist style house used to stand, adjoining the Dohány synagogue.[12] The Jewish Museum was built in 1930 in accordance with the synagogue's architectural style and attached in 1931 to the main building. It holds the Jewish Religious and Historical Collection, a collection of religious relics of the Pest Hevrah Kaddishah (Jewish Burial Society), ritual objects of Shabbat and the High Holidays and a Holocaust room.

Heroes' Temple

The arcade and the Heroes' Temple, which seats 250 people and is used for religious services on weekdays and during the winter time, was added the Dohány Street Synagogue complex in 1931.

The Heroes' Temple was designed by Lázlo Vágó and Ferenc Faragó and serves as a memorial to Hungarian Jews who gave their lives during World War I. 

This particular post is published to the same blog where I described our sobering visit to The Killing Fields, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia where we visited several years ago. Both visits were sobering for providing evidence about man's senseless cruelty to man.

Po Pot led the evil Khmer Rouge to murder Cambodians, a genocide without cause. He presided over a totalitarian dictatorship, in which his government made urban dwellers move to the countryside to work in collective farms and on forced labour projects. The combined effects of executions, strenuous working conditions, malnutrition and poor medical care caused the deaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population

Likewise, there was no reason for the Hungarians to participate in the 1944-45 genocide of the Budapest Jews. 

In fact, our Hungarian guide in Budapest told us the Jews were persecuted with an unfathomable vengeance, so much so "even the Germans were amazed at their tactics". 

Our Hungarian guide "Andre" said even the Germans were amazed by the persecution of the Jews by the "Hungarian Nazis" in Budapest. (Outside of The Great Synagogue)

Holocaust Memorial at The Great Synagogue in Budapest

Our guide said, even though the Jewish tradition is not to bury their dead at the synagogue, the exception was to create a memorial with graves of the victims of the Budapest Holocaust victims. This memorial was funded by the American actor, Tony Curtis.

The Dohány Street Synagogue (Hungarian: Dohány utcai zsinagóga/nagy zsinagóga, Hebrew: בית הכנסת הגדול של בודפשט‎ bet hakneset hagadol šel budapešt), also known as The Great Synagogue or Tabakgasse Synagogue, is a historical building in Erzsébetváros, the 7th district of Budapest, Hungary. It is the largest synagogue in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It seats 3,000 people and is a centre of Neolog Judaism.

The synagogue was built between 1854 and 1859 in the Moorish Revival style, with the decoration based chiefly on Islamic models fromNorth Africa and medieval Spain (the Alhambra). The synagogue's Viennese architect, Ludwig Förster, believed that no distinctively Jewish architecture could be identified, and thus chose "architectural forms that have been used by oriental ethnic groups that are related to the Israelite people, and in particular the Arabs".The interior design is partly by Frigyes Feszl.

The Dohány Street Synagogue complex consists of the Great Synagogue, the Heroes' Temple, the graveyard, the Memorial and the Jewish Museum, which was built on the site on which Theodore Herzl's house of birth stood. Dohány Street itself, a leafy street in the city center, carries strong Holocaust connotations as it constituted the border of the Budapest Ghett

Holocaust memorial stone in the Jewish museum in Budapest Hungary

Built in a residential area between 1854-1859 by the Jewish community of Pest according to the plans of Ludwig Förster, the monumental synagogue has a capacity of 2,964 seats (1,492 for men and 1,472 in the women's galleries) making it the largest in Europe and one of the largest working synagogues in the world (after the Beit Midrash of Ger in Jerusalem, the Belz Great Synagogueand Temple Emanu-el in New York City).  The consecration of the synagogue took place on 6 September 1859.

The synagogue was bombed by the Hungarian pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party on 3 February 1939. It was used as a base for German Radio and also as a stable during World War II, the building suffered some severe damage from aerial raids during the Nazi Occupation but especially during the Siege of Budapest.

During the Communist era the damaged structure became again a prayer house for the much-diminished Jewish community. Its restoration started in 1991 and ended in 1998. The restoration was financed by the state and by private donations.

Holocaust Memorial at The Great Synagogue

Budapest street flowering column at The Great Synagogue

In 1944, the Dohány Street Synagogue was part of the Jewish Ghetto for the Budapest Jews and served as shelter for a lot of people. Over two thousand of those who died in the ghetto from hunger and cold during the winter 1944-1945 are buried in the courtyard of the synagogue.

It's not customary to have a cemetery next to a synagogue, but the establishment of the 3000 m2 cemetery was the result of historical circumstances. In 1944, as a part of the Eichmann-plan, 70.000 Jews were relocated to the Ghetto of Pest. Until January 18, 1945, when the Russians liberated the ghetto, around 8-10.000 people had died, although, one part of the deceased were transferred to the Kozma Street Cemetery, but 2.000 people were buried in the makeshift cemetery. In memory of those who had died, there is a memorial by the sculptor, Imre Varga, depicting a weeping willow with the names and tattoo numbers of the dead and disappeared just behind the Synagogue, in the Raoul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park.

L'Heureux photographs

Raul Wallenberg Memorial Park is home to the Holocaust Memorial, located in the backyard of the Great Synagogue.  the Holocaust Memorial is also known as the Emanuel Tree (by Imre Varga), is a weeping willow tree. Each leaf is a memoril for a person who was killed in the Hungarian Holocaust. The memorial was inspired by the American actor Tony Curtis, who founded the Emanual Foundation, in New York City.