Zwölfaxing

We said goodbye to our hostel this morning and checked out before heading to the Grand Synagogue. We bought our tickets and entered the synagogue and Daniel was given a traditional Jewish head covering for the visit to the synagogue.

As we had learnt a couple of days earlier, this is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world, seating up to 3000 people. We had a 45 minute tour included in our ticket which was really informative. Our guide explained that the reason why such a large synagogue was built in a prominent catholic area is a very interesting story. In the early 1800s, Jews fled Jerusalem because of Roman attempts to conquer the city. Some fled south east towards Asia but most went northwest and many stayed in Hungary because the king at the time was accepting of Jewish people.

The Jewish people had money and wanted to assimilate with the local Catholics and hence built a synagogue which looks very much like a church, with an altar at the front, lines of pews and even pulpits. This had the double meaning of wanting Roman Catholics to accept Jews because, if a catholic were to enter the synagogue, they would see that Jews are similar to Catholics and hence not the threat that many thought they were. For this reason, the synagogue is not a traditional Jewish synagogue.

The construction of the synagogue only took 5 years from 1854-1859 and was funded by selling the 3000 seats before construction had commenced. We saw engraved names at the front of some seats which were sold at that time and passed down by generations of families.

After learning the history of the synagogue itself, we learnt of the more devastating history associated with antisemitism. Next to the synagogue in the adjacent courtyard was originally a beautiful pool, but following WW2, been filled in to form the 24 mass graves containing over 2000 people killed during WWII in the Jewish ghettos due to the horrific conditions at that time. Over 1000 of these people are unidentified. Once the Soviet army liberated Hungary, the bodies were placed in these graves and have remained there for nearly 80 years. It was very sad hearing our guide speak about this history and the devastation that was caused.

Behind this courtyard, there is a much more ‘traditional’ synagogue which was built to commentate Jewish WWI soldiers. Underneath the courtyard/synagogue, there is a very moving photo exhibition telling the story of Jewish growth, decline, oppression and liberation within Hungary. There is also a beautiful garden which honours people who helped Jewish people during the Shoah (the Holocaust) and contains a metal tree with leaves containing the names of Hungarian Jews who were killed during this terrible time period.

We also visited a musesum which houses a lot of interesting Jewish objects across time and details the various festivals and traditions in the Jewish religion. It was very interesting.

After finishing at the synagogue and musesum, we had some lángos and traditional goulash for lunch which was very filling and delicious!

We headed back to the hostel to get our luggage bags and headed to the train station to catch a train to Austria! It was about a half an hour walk in the heat but we are very used to walking around with our big backpacks on by now!

We arrived in Vienna around 8pm and made our way to our cool hostel. For the first couple of nights, we are staying in a Japanese-style space capsule near the train station! Such an interesting and unique experience! We had showers, got ready for lift off and went to sleep.Read more