The Great Synagogue in Budapest is the largest Jewish house of worship in the world outside of New York City and was built in 1859. It is a beautiful building, somber but delicately decorated, and wonderfully cool after walking around in the afternoon heat outside.
The Holocaust Memorial behind the synagogue. It’s the Tree of Life, and every leaf has the family name of a victim inscribed upon it. The memorial is standing on one of the mass graves of the people that were murdered by the Nazis in 1944 and 1945.
There is also a small, tranquil cemetery within the synagogue grounds – according to a sign this is where many of the dead were buried during the ghetto days during WWII. The stones were added afterwards, by surviving family members, and put around the graves where the dead was thought to have been buried. Later, the vines were allowed to grow on the graves, as a way to make it a more tranquil resting place.
It is a heavy history that surrounds this synagogue, stories I don’t really know what to do with. Like the incredible, amazing books by Jonathan Safran Foer (“Everything is Illuminated”) and Nicole Krauss (“The History of Love”). I can’t grasp it.
Katja Malmborg 