Dohány Street Synagogue ... July 5, 2009

I visited the Jewish Synagogue, which is the largest in the world next to the Temple Emanu-El in New York City. It was completed in 1859 but severely damaged by bombings by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party in 1939 (this is the organization that murdered thousands of Jews...see the Shoe Memorial previous post). It was used as a German radio base as well as a stable during the war with the restoration occurring in 1991. The complex was part of the Jewish Ghetto established during the war, so a large number of Jews took refuge here. There is a graveyard in the back (separate from the house of prayer, per Jewish laws) where over 2,000 Jews who perished in the Ghetto from hunger and cold in 1944 are buried there.
Next to the Synagogue is the Raul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park, remembering the 400,000 Hungarian Jews murdered by the Nazis (the monument represents a Weeping Willow Tree, with the names of the perished engraved on the "leaves"). It still amazes me how a group of people could be so dark as to administer such horrific acts as the Nazis did.
That being said, the Synagogue has been rebuilt, as has the Jewish community in Budapest, but not without severe pain and suffering.