Dohány Street Synagogue

The synagogue in Budapest is Europe's largest, seating nearly 3,000 people.  The Arrow Cross, pro-Nazi Hungarian fascists, bombed it in 1939.  After the fall of communism, Estee Lauder gave $5 million to complete the magnificent restoration.  My mother loved Estee Lauder products.  I'd like to think some of the money she spent on them ended up here.

We donned paper yarmulkes before entering.  They were for sale as souvenirs, too.

Manhattan's Central Synagogue knocked off the interior of the Dohány Street Synagogue. They stole from the best.  Their theft likely contributed to the restoration's accuracy.

Two thousand Jews who starved to death in Budapest ghetto during the Nazi occupation are buried on the grounds because their families weren't allowed access to traditional Jewish cemeteries elsewhere in the city.  Few of their names were recorded.

There's also a Holocaust Memorial commemorating the 400,000 Jews murdered in concentration camps.

Famous congregants, including Josef Pulitzer, are memorialized in arches that line the street-facing side of the cemetery.  Pulitzer emigrated to America in 1858 and earned his fortune in the newspaper business.  In addition to the prize that bears his name, he left a bequest that established the Columbia School of Journalism, where I was waitlisted after graduating from the college in 1975.

We made a game of finding star motifs.

Raoul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park, the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs, and a Righteous Among Nations memorial are behind the synagogue.

The memorial to the martyrs resembles a weeping willow.  Had I looked more closely, I would have seen that the leaves are inscribed with the victim's names.