Budapest Day 18

   

Upon rereading this missive, I again realize that the detail may be much more than anyone elsemay be interested in. I have written it to retain my own memories. But if you only want to know what we did or saw, here is the condensed version:

We left the ship to numerous renditions of So Long Farewell.

We were bussed to our new very ritzy hotel.

We went on a Jewish Interest tour in which we saw several memorials as well as the Great Synagogue and the Holocaust Museum.

Lunch was at a Hungarian bistro at which time we could finally check in, rest, reorganize and visit the sumptuous spa, an included amenity.

We dined at another Hungarian restaurant with gypsy music.

Read on only if you are bored and have nothing else to do for the next half hour. You have all been warned so I expect no complaints about my excessive recount.

Today we disembarked from the MS Sound of Music. I can't tell you how many times I heard people singing 'So Long, Farewell'. But our tour is not yet over. We transferred to a five star hotel in the city. I thought the Imperial in Prague was posh, but it cannot stand up to our new hotel, the Corinthia Royal Hotel. It is a huge building. The lobby is a six storey atrium that is spectacular even on a rainy day. The hotel in Prague had every surface adorned in some type of art deco. This hotel calls attention to itself with its quiet elegant simplicity. Orchids and lilies adorn every counter. In addition, most of the rooms face a courtyard and the trams from the street cannot be heard. By the time we were able to check in I both felt and looked bedraggled. I'm sure that if our room had not been reserved by Gate 1, we would have been shown the door.

On the bus, we met our new tour manager. Wow!! She is humorous, fluent, articulate and holds a doctorate in ethno-cultures. She was the one who led the Jewish Interest Tour. Her commentary in the Great Synagogue gave us a great deal of insight into the attitudes and culture of the Jewish population in 1850. The Hungarian Jews like the Germans were very well integrated and considered themselves Hungarians first. By this point in the nineteenth century, many of the affluent Jews wanted to modify their beliefs so that the practices were more in line with those of the Catholic. They were called neologues. They decided to build their own synagogue but instead of hiring one of the many Hungarian Jewish architects, they hired an Austrian named Forster. Unfortunately he knew nothing about Judaism, but conscientiously traveled to Spain to research the design of synagogues there. What he did not realize was that the Sephardic temples in Spain were very Moorish in design. Many of the elements of this synagogue resemble a mosque, but many more are representative of a Catholic cathedral.

These are some of the features the architect got wrong: The many stained glass windows have eight, not six sided stars. The bimah was placed at the front instead of in a central location as was the style then. Two pulpits were built on either side but Jews did not deliver sermons from the sides of the church. All the pews had kneelers at the front although Jews don't kneel during prayers. There are two towers outside that look like minarets. The inside is totally Moorish. In all despite, the conventional  features, it feels far more like a church than a synagogue. The community became concerned about the non-Jewish look and hired a Jewish architect to advise them how to rectify the problems. His suggestions included moving the bimah back to the centre, removing the kneelers and removing the pulpits, but all of these features had already been built and paid for so they stayed. The only 'Jewish' addition was a little roof over each pulpit whose underside had a painted Star of David.

 

                                                                

                                                       The Synagogue Garden

 The women's section was two storeyed and wrapped around the main floor. In this Shul, there were 64 torahs in the ark of the covenant. Most of them were rescued from camps, found after being safely hidden or taken from synagogues that could not gather together a minyan for prayers and remained closed after the war. 

                                       

                                           The women's balcony

We moved onto the garden. When the Jews were confined to the ghetto, they were not permitted to bury their dead in the cemetery outside the ghetto walls. As a result, the dead were buried in this garden, in total, 10,000, one layer of bodies on top of the next separated only by a covering of lye. At the end of the war, the bodies were removed and buried in the regular cemetery. However, family members wanted to commemorate their dead in some way and began placing individual small marble markers back in the garden so now it truly looks like a cemetery. There is also a monument to the Jews who died while in the army labour camps. It is very disturbing. At one end are coffins from which bodies are falling, rising and as skeletons, marching along.

In the back section of the temple property is the Holocaust memorial by the same sculptor as the one in the garden. It is called the Tree of Life and takes the form of a weeping willow, but when you look carefully you can see that it also looks like an upside down menorah. The end of the branches have metal leaves with the names of victims engraved. 

                                

                                    The Treeof Life

Further back, there is a stained glass memorial created by a camp survivor. It is called the Inferno and resembles swirling flames rising to the air. Each colour in the piece is representative of aspect of her experience, the yellows the stars the Jews were forced to wear, the red, the crematoria, the black, the ashes, the brown, the Nazi uniforms and so on. The colours become less intense towards the top of the piece representing hope. Of course photos would be much better than my descriptions, but they will have to wait until I download them from my camera.

                                                 

Our next visit was to the Holocaust museum. It is the most moving and chilling one we have seen yet. It is housed on the property of a synagogue that never reopened because there weren't enough Jews for a minyan. The property, however, is encased in a structure that looks like a sarcophagus. Inside the walls, all the angles are askew. Before entering the underground exhibit, there is a four-sided glass wall naming the 1,414 communities in Hungary that were wiped out by the Nazis. The exhibit follows the fates of a number of families through the war years, again giving a very human face to the number six million. The fate of  Roma families is followed as well. Moving from one room to the next is like walking through a maze. Black glass walls painted with evenly spaced white lines border the exhibit. The lines represent the members of the families in the exhibit. At the death of one of these people, the line abruptly stops but the space remains. 

                                        

                        White lines: family members Blank spaces: those who have died

By the end of the exhibit, only a few of the lines still exist. Very effective and frightening. The first rooms portray life before the war and the music is lively, like that played at a wedding. As the rights of the Jews were rescinded, the music changes to marching feet and at the end of the exhibit is the sound of only one beating heart. I have never seen Gila so moved by anything we have seen. Even recalling it brings her to tears. Becoming more in touch with this 'history of victims’ has been one of the most important parts of this trip for her. She is amazed at what she does not know and hungers to get all the blanks filled in immediately. Her interest in the galleries of Budapest has waned in light of what she has experienced.

The final part of the museum is the synagogue itself, built at the same time as the Great Synagogue but far more modest. 

                                              

                                                  The Holocaust Museum Synagogue

Unfortunately, due to time we were rushed through the museum but the impression was nonetheless strong. As impressed as I was with Daniel Liebeskind's museum in Berlin, this one is even more upsetting. That was the end of the tour, but Gila and I both wanted more. We asked our guide if she could recommend a guide. Apparently, she does private tours and we are hiring her to take us around on Thursday morning.

On our return we still could not check in so we went to a recommended restaurant nearby. The waiter asked us where we were from. When he heard that it was Toronto, he wanted to know about the CN Tower!  

                                             

                                                 Lunch at a Bistro

After lunch we finally got to our room. Like the lobby it exudes quiet yet simple elegance. The amenities include a sumptuous breakfast and a SPA! After unpacking, settling in and resting, we headed to the jacuzzi. Nothing could have been more rejuvenating at that moment. I didn't leave the spa until all my skin was completely pruned.

Dinner was at a Hungarian restaurant that played gypsy music while we ate. These were not run of the mill musicians and the music certainly enhanced the attentive service and the delicious food. Beside us was a young Irish couple and we shared some of our experiences with one another. The highlight of the evening was the playing of Hava Na Gila. Of course Gila let the musicians know it was her song and tipped them generously for the performance that evening.

The waiters were in no hurry to get us to leave and by the time we were back in our room it was closing on midnight and the spa was closed. Our day tomorrow definitely will start with a hot tub session.