Erzsébetváros, Synagogues - Budapest, Hungary

Location:

GPS coordinates: Latitude 47°29'49", Longitude 19°3'35" (N47 29.82 - E19 3.58) Map

The inner courtyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue, including a park and a cemetery

The Dohány Street Great Synagogue is the only one Jewish house of prayer that has a cemetery in its garden or courtyard. 1,140 identified and 1,170 unidentified martyrs of the Jewish ghetto of the World War II were buried here at the end of the war, under the pressure of necessity. The Judaism disallows the burials in the immediate vicinity of the synagogues. But for the Jews the prohibition of the exhumation of the dead is an even stronger regulation, so the bodies and the tombs of the world war victims stayed here in the courtyard of the synagogue as oenof the sad mementos of the Holocaust.

The Emanuel Memorial Tree at the Dohány Street Synagogue, in memory of the Holocaust victims of Hungary

The Emanuel Memorial Tree monument was created by courtesy of the Emanuel Foundation, that was founded in 1987 by the Hungarian Jewish-born American film actor Tony Curtis (1925-2010). The name of the foundation refers to the father of the movie star, Emanuel Schwartz was emigrated with his family from Mátészalka, Hungary to the United States of America. Tony Curtis was born in New York as Bernard Schwartz, he used the artist's name since the beginning of his acting career and finally he became world famous with this name as well.

The sculpture in the backyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue (in the so-called Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park) commemorates the about 600 000 Hungarian Jewish victims of the Holocaust in the World War II. The contemporary style metal and marble sculpture represents a symbolic weeping willow tree, on the about 30 000 leaves the names of the martyrs can be seen. The composition was created by the Hungarian sculptor Imre Varga in 1990.