After getting our coffee and pastry for the morning, we packed.  That took about an hour or two and we had some free time to just laze around the apartment.  After eating our leftovers from Poroszló for lunch, we walked down the 6 flights of stairs because the elevator was out of service.  Then to the meeting point and met our guide, Greta, and the other four people in our group.  We started with the Great Dohanyi Synagogue, which was built in 1854-59.  It was built in the Moorish style, and was designed as a somewhat reformed temple catering to the highly secularized Budapest Jewish community.

Then we moved outside into a courtyard that served as a mass burial site for those who died in the Budapest ghetto of cold and starvation when 70,000 were forced to live in an area designed for just a few thousand people during one of the coldest winters on record from November 1944 to the spring of 1945 when the Jews of the ghetto were transported to Auschwitz.  We will need to contact the archives to see if we can get any information about the family. We also looked at the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial which is a metal weeping willow with names inscribed on all the leaves.

We then proceeded through the area of the ghetto wandering through an area with night clubs and bars set into what were ruined buildings.  These ruin pubs are now the hottest night life area in Budapest.  We saw the ghetto wall from the outside, saw another synagogue which is currently being reconstructed and toured the Orthodox synagogue. Our guide was very knowledgeable and was able to discuss language, the difference between the Jews of the outlying parts of Hungary versus the more assimilated population in Budapest. She was able to point out architectural details of the synagogues and of the surrounding buildings, and she gave us a good history of Hungary.  This was a very good tour.

Ghetto Wall from World War II Ghetto

Ghetto Map

We ended on Andrassy Street which is the main shopping street of Budapest.  We were right next door to the Nespresso store so stopped in to get some replacement pods for our apartment.  We then caught the metro from where the tour ended at the Opera.  No pictures of the Opera since it is covered in scaffolding and material.  On the short walk back from the metro stop, we picked up a pizza and a salad for a light dinner.  We’ll finish packing, sleep, and head for the airport and home tomorrow.