The Synagogue and a Church in a Cave

Monday with the time running out on our Ho-Ho tickets, we took an "orange" line bus from Kelvin Ter (the square at the top of our street) to the Dohány Synagogue.  Visiting this was something that has been on my 'to do' list for a while.  We were lucky as the line was short and we probably waited no more than 10 minutes for a ticket and then joined the 11 am tour already in progress.  Interesting, every male entering the synagogue was given a paper yarmulke to wear.  I am not familiar with Jewish traditions but we found out men of this form of Judaism are expected to cover their heads at all times.  As we had missed some of the info and weren't too impressed with the guide, after she was finished, we waited for the next guide.  He was much better.  The following is information from Wikipedia about the synagogue:

The Dohány Street Synagogue, 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 the second largest in the world after one in New York city.  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 from North 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 Theodor Herzl's house of birth stood. D ohány Street itself, a leafy street in the city center, carries strong Holocaust connotations as it constituted the border of the Budapest Ghetto.

The guide gave us the following information:

• There were around 900.000 Jews living in Hungary at the start of WWII and most of them perished either in Auschwitz, Dachau or Bergen Belsen.
    
• Raoul Wallenberg, a Swede, is credited with saving the lives of tens of thousands of Jews living in Budapest.  The complex includes a memorial to him.
• Because the Allies were aware many Jews were living in the ghetto around the synagogue, this area of Budapest wasn't bombed so the synagogue, and many of the Jews, about 70,000 of them, survived.
• Behind the synagogue there is a mass grave with something like 2000 people buried there plus a memorial to Wallenberg and a beautiful sculpture called The Tree of Life which is basically an upside down menorah which looks like a willow tree.  Most of the leaves on the tree are engraved with the names of Hungarian victims of the Holocaust.   

During the guide’s explanation, he asked if there were any questions.  There were a couple of Germans (or maybe Austrians) in our group although why they weren’t with the German group is lost on me.  I was almost shocked when the woman asked if Jews were given the same freedoms as everyone else and if they were allowed to work in all professions or if there were restrictions on them or if they could be refused employment.  Maybe it was something lost in translation or I misunderstood her point but it sure sounded anti-Semitic to me!  She sounded surprised that Jews had equal rights to other Hungarians.  

Just behind the synagogue in what was the ghetto is another memorial to a Swiss man named Karl Lutz who was also responsible for saving some Jewish lives.  On a related note, I have written before about the "Stolperstein" which are brass plates placed in the cobblestones in front of houses memorializing Jews taken from the residence (typically, the plates give the persons' names and their fate).  I have seen a number of them in Germany (Gengenbach, for example) but we have also spotted several here.

Carl Lutz Memorial

Stolperstein (above and below)

Following our visit to the synagogue, we had wanted to wander more around the ghetto area but it was raining so we hopped on the "orange" line bus and headed over the Liberty Bridge to the Buda side where we got off at the Gellert Hotel and Spa.  Kath wanted to experience the baths here.  Afterwards, she said she was more impressed with Harrison Hot Springs than this world famous spa!

Our final stop of the day was the nearby Chapel in the Rock.  This chapel is on a small hill directly opposite the landmark Danubius Hotel Gellért.  It was built into a cave in 1926 and was the seat of Hungary's Pauline order until 1951, when the priests were imprisoned by the communists and the cave sealed off. It was reopened and reconsecrated in 1992. Behind the chapel is a monastery with neo-Gothic turrets that are visible from Liberty Bridge.