Day 20: Walking Budapest and Jewish Quarter
Last day in Budapest, 1st day of rain, though it stopped by about 11 am. Jeri and I finally got to try some European mass transit. This is the oldest subway on the continent (London is older but not considered "on the Continent"). We were on our way from our B&B (a real one, not the broken boat) to meet up with Beth and Erik back at the Sofitel for our walking tour of Budapest. it was much better than getting soaked.
We met our guide and were off.
After a brief stop at the Parliament building, 2nd largest in the world (built for the Austro-Hungarian Empire which was soon defunct after losing WWI), we walk to the shore of the Danube to see the monument to Holocaust victims in Budapest, killed at the hands of the Hungarian fascists, the Arrow Cross Party. They rounded up 2,000 Jews from the ghetto and shot them on the shore of the Danube after forcing them to remove their shoes, then threw the bodies into the river. These shoes act as a remembrance for those who died. The sculptor, Gyula Pauer, created 60 pairs of iron shoes lined up over about 100 feet of shoreline. The weather today made this memorial even more chilling.
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| "The Shoes on the Danube Bank" |
We left the Pest side of the Danube to stroll around the Buda and the Castle District.
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| St. Matyas Church |
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| Another monument to thank God for surviving the Black Plague |
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| St. Matyas Church |
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| St. Matyas Church |
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| Monument to St. Matyas |
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| One of the many thermal baths in Budapest |
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| Church in the Cave |
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| Church in the Cave |
After lunch, we said our goodbyes to Erik and Beth. It is always nice to meet people on these trips with whom one can easily slip into a close friendship. We all promised to get together again soon.
We were off for our final tour in Budapest, the Jewish Quarter. First stop was the Jewish Museum in a building built over the site of Teodore Herzl's (the Father of Zionism) birthplace. Adjacent to this is the Dohany Street Synagogue (the Great Synagogue), the largest synagogue in Europe, and the 2nd largest in the world.
It is a Neologue Synagogue, a branch of Judaism unique to Hungary. It was ann attempt by Jews in the mid 1800's to assimilate more into Hungarian society but still retain some orthodoxy (as opposed to the German Reform movement which was exported to the US and elsewhere). Men and women are separated, prayers are in Hebrew, but sermons are in Hungarian. There is an organ as well. The interior is gorgeous, completely restored after the Nazi occupation followed by the communist regime until 1991.
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| An attempt to look like a church with side pulpits |
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| Mass graves of Holocaust victims found in the synagogue courtyard, now a memorial |
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| Stolperstein or "stumbling block", remembrance of a Holocaust victim who lived in this location |
We also visited the Kacinczy Street Synagogue, the orthodox synagogue here in Budapest.
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| This is how it appeared after the Nazis used it to house horses. |
