Bearing witness to the Holocaust in Budapest

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 The Holocaust came late to Hungary and Budapest, at least compared to most of the rest of Europe. Because Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany, the Nazi's "Final Solution" did not extend inside the country for much of World War II. While Hungary did enact a series of anti-semitic laws starting in 1938, there was no systematic effort to deport or kill Hungarian Jews until after German troops invaded Hungary in 1944. That invasion was prompted by Hitler's fears that Hungary was trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies, and almost immediately afterwards highly organized efforts to deport Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz began. The number of German troops in Hungary was insufficient to accomplish this operation without extensive cooperation by Hungarian officials, and the successful deportation of more that 400,000 Jews in the first two months of the German occupation is a testament to the extent that the Hungarian authorities collaborated with the Nazis.

We encountered our first tributes to the Holocaust during our second guided tour of the city, on our second morning here. After a walk through City Park, we were taken to the banks of the Danube by bus to continue our tour. Our first stop was the "Shoes on the Danube Bank" memorial. The shoes are metal sculptures representing the shoes of the Jews and others who were executed along the river bank by the fascist Hungarian militia in 1944-45. The victims were ordered to remove their shoes, clothing, and valuables. Then, to save bullets, they were handcuffed together in pairs or groups of three, and one of each set of handcuffed victims was shot and all were pushed into the river, according to our tour guide. Sobering in its simplicity, this memorial was a deeply moving reminder of the atrocities committed here. Mixed in with the shoes and the snow were numerous yellow ribbons, added by recent visitors in support of Israel in its war with Hamas.

Our tour then continued around the Hungarian Parliament building and over to Liberty Square, with its monument to the liberation of Hungary by the Soviet Army. We walked by the US Embassy, located on this square, and then stopped at the Memorial for Victims of the German Occupation, located along the far edge of the square. This monument was approved in secret and erected overnight, and has been highly controversial because it appears to lay the entire blame for the atrocities of the German occupation upon the Germans, while giving the Hungarian officials and fascists a pass. The vast majority of those that died during the German occupation were Hungarian Jews, and the Hungarian authorities collaborated deeply with the Germans in their deaths. As a consequence, visitors have created an improvisational memorial by leaving letters, photos, and other possessions and tokens of the victims, along with flowers and candles along the fencing in front of the official memorial. These highly personal remembrances stand in sharp contrast to the starkness of the official memorial, and offer a counter perspective to the attempt to whitewash the history of the occupation.

The next day, we visited the Dohány Street Synagogue, which serves as yet another reminder of the thriving Jewish community in Budapest prior to World War II. This is the second largest synagogue in the world, and was built in the 19th century to serve the large Jewish community that lived and worked in the city. The synagogue is gorgeous, but now serves a shrunken community that is a mere fraction of what the building is capable of holding. During the German occupation, the synagogue stood at the edge of the ghetto that confined the Jewish population of Budapest, and upon liberation of the ghetto by the Soviets in January 1945, about 2,000 deceased inhabitants of the ghetto were buried in mass graves in the courtyard next to the synagogue, forever changing it from a place of peaceful meditation to a solemn place of remembrance. And in the memorial garden behind the synagogue, named in memory of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who used his position to try to save as many Hungarian Jews as he could, stands a stainless steel willow tree that serves as a memorial to the Jewish Holocaust victims, with their names engraved on the leaves of the tree.

 
 

As we walked the streets of the city, we watched the sidewalks, looking for the "stumbling stones", small brass plaques engraved with the names of Holocaust victims who lived at that location. We've seen them in every other European city we've visited over the last few years, and we saw some here as well, although they were less common than I expected. I don't know if that means that the neighborhoods we walked through didn't have large Jewish populations, or if it is because Budapest's Jewish population lost a smaller percentage of its residents than other cities of comparable size. Either way, they do exist and serve as a reminder of the individual lives that were taken.

It is difficult to travel anywhere in Europe and not be confronted in one way or another with the vastness of the Holocaust. The story of the Holocaust in Budapest and Hungary follows a different arc than much of the rest of the continent, but is no less sobering and disturbing. As tempting as it is to avoid contemplating this evil legacy while traveling, we compelled to devote at least a little time on these trips to learn and remember the atrocities committed here.