Heroes' Garden Cemetery - Common graves on the territory of the former Budapest Ghetto
Thoughts about the photos...
1. Commemorative tablet in Hungarian with the words: "One of the ghetto gates stood here during the fascism. The liberator Soviet army demolished the ghetto walls on 18th January 1945." 2. Not a usual site next to a synagogue. According to the Jewish traditions cemeteries can not be on the premises of the house of prayer. A Kohen can not even get close to graves. This graveyard is the result of tragic historical events. 3. Many small name plaques around the gropes were placed by families who have lost relatives in the Budapest ghetto. 4. Those are the arcades of the Dohany synagogue complex. 5. Visitors are not allowed inside the cemetery, in order to keep the due respect. Of course relatives can get permission to enter from the Jewish Community Center. 6. The cemetery is located in the back yard of the Heroes' Temple, enclosed by the Jewish Museum and the Dohany synagogue. Other holocaust memorials have also been placed here. We can see the back part of the memorial dedicated to those, who parished in labour camps. 7. On top of the black marble stone metal figures symbolize the thin bodies crowded together in the labor camps.
History of the Budapest Ghetto mass graves
The Heroes' Temple and the Hungarian Jewish Museum were constructed as part of the Dohany synagogue complex in 1931. The territory enclosed by the three buildings was a little green spot until it became part of the Budapest ghetto on 18th November 1944. Almost 300 houses with around 4500 apartments became part of the Budapest ghetto with 55 000 people crowded into them. By January 1945 this number grew to 70 000. Due to the extreme weather conditions, lack of supplies of food and medicine and the perpetrators' terror many people lost their lives on the territory of the ghetto. Their bodies were left unburied on the streets and in the courtyard of the Dohany synagogue. Photos here. On January 18, 1945 the ghetto enclosed by Dohany, Karoly, Kiraly and Kertesz streets was liberated by Russian military forces. Several days later on February 17, 1945 the police station of the VIIth district reported that the burial of corpses collected from the area of the former ghetto had been finished. The cemeteries chosen for them were: Kozma street cemetery (3500 victims were buried there), Salgotarjan street cemetery and the garden of the Heroes' Temple. The small garden became of major importance by offering eternal resting place for the victims buried in common graves. Today it is a silent place with many small headstones crowded together around the 24 graves and more than 2000 corpses beneath.
Address: 1074 Budapest, Dohany utca 2. - take subway M1 (yellow) / M2 (red) / M3 (blue) to Deak ter station, then walk on Karoly korut towards Astoria. - take subway M2, tram 47, 49 or bus 7, 78 to Astoria station, then walk on Karoly korut towards Deak ter. - the Dohany Synagogue is at walking distance from the downtown hotels and the famous pedestrian shopping street called Vaci utca.
Opening hours (these are the occasions to walk along the graveyard, no entry inside)
19th March: the German troops enter Hungary 29th March: Jews have to wear the yellow badge 3rd April: first arial attack of the Allies upon Budapest 26th April: first decree on the establishment of a GHETTO 15th May: deportation of Hungarian Jews from the rural territories begins 15 October: The Arrow-Cross party takes over power 4th November: the Margaret bridge is blown up in Budapest, the Soviet troops approach Budapest 18th November: the Budapest Ghetto is established 20th December: the siege of Budapest begins
1945
18th January: the Budapest Ghetto is liberated by the Soviets
Related information
Budapest Ghetto Wikipedia article
The Budapest ghetto was a ghetto where Jews were forced to live in Budapest, Hungary during the Second World War. The area consisted of several blocks of the old Jewish quarter of the city surrounding the main synagogue...
Holocaust Encyclopedia - Hungary United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Before World War II, approximately 200,000 Jews lived in Budapest, making it the center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Budapest was a safe haven for Jewish refugees..
Hungary before the German occupation United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Pressured by domestic radical nationalists and fascists, Hungary fell increasingly under the influence of Germany as the Nazi regime consolidated itself in the 1930s...
Deportation to killing centers United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
After they began to methodically kill Jews in specially constructed killing centers, the Nazis deported Jews by train and, when trains were not available and the distances were short, by forced march or truck...
Hungary after the German occupation United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Hungarian gendarmes were sent into the rural regions to round up the Jews and dispatch them to the cities. The urban areas in which the Jews were forced to concentrate were enclosed and referred to as ghettos. Sometimes the ghettos encompassed the area of a former Jewish neighborhood. In other cases the ghetto was merely a single building, such as a factory...
Decree On the Establishment of the Budapest Ghetto Jewish Virtual Library
The Hungarian Government orders the separation of the territory assigned to the Jews (the ghetto) from the territory inhabited by non-Jews. The buildings facing the streets and roads specified as boundaries are not included in the area assigned to the Jews. Non-Jews may not live in the areas assigned to Jews and may not work there, and authorities and public institutions may not have offices in these areas...
Commemorating 'Pariah Landscapes': Memorialising the Budapest Ghetto, 1945-2000 This place of history, the Budapest ghetto, was in many ways not typical of other Holocaust ghettos. This, after all,was the only ghetto to be liberated rather than liquidated. While the majority of Hungarian 'Jews' had been ghettoised and then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the early summer of 1944, Budapest's 'Jews' were spared deportation... Thus the city's 'Jews' were still living in the ghetto when the Soviet Army reached Budapest in January 1945. During the summer of 1944 close to 200,000 'Jews' were housed in ghetto houses throughout the city, but in November 1944, a closed ghetto was set up in the heart of Budapest, in the traditional 'Jewish' quarter...
Congressman Lantos Commemorates Liberation of Budapest Ghetto Embassy news from Hungary's American Embassy
On January 19, 2006, Congressman Tom Lantos attended the ceremony at the Dohány Street Synagogue commemorating the 61st anniversary of the liberation of the Budapest Ghetto...
Personal Reflections - In Ghettos The story of Bertha (Panni) Guttman, A Nazi Holocaust Survivor of the Budapest Ghetto...With a difference
During the month of November, 1944, we heard that the Hungarian Nazis, members of the Arrow Cross Party, will come to our buildings with the Yellow Star and will take all the Jewish women under 40...
Hungarians have been marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Budapest ghetto. BBC news
Survivors of the ghetto, top politicians and church representatives attended the service in Budapest's large Dohany Street synagogue, near to what was the central ghetto area... 60,000 people survived in terrible conditions in the narrow streets of Budapest's seventh district, despite constant efforts by the Nazis and the Arrow Cross to destroy them...
