A History Lesson in Budapest...

Budapest, Hungary

September 18, 2007
N47°31.120
E019°04.900

Today, our last full day in Budapest, was spent checking out the remaining sites we hadn’t seen. This included the Citadel with its amazing views of the Budapest skyline and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Unfortunately, the clouds came in overnight, dropping a little rain, and making another day at the baths very unlikely.

First, we headed to the Holocaust Memorial Museum which is located only a few blocks from our hotel. The museum and adjacent Synagogue detailed Hungary’s involvement and loss of life in the horrific events during World War II. We’ve read a lot of literature around the events, but seeing the pictures and listening to audio and video accounts from survivors we fought back tears as the films outlined the devastation.

At one point during World War II, Jews from other European countries sought protection in Hungary where Jewish people were somewhat protected by the government. The Jewish people in Hungary contributed greatly to the economy and continued to live in there homes; not in ghettos and internment camps as in neighboring countries and, from what we could tell, without the yellow star, or yellow badge the Jewish people were required to brandish.

However, the Hungarian government was caught playing both sides during the war—they worked with Hitler to regain territory they lost after WWI and then began negotiating with the British and Americans when it became evident that Germany was fighting a losing cause. Germany caught wind of the negotiations and in the early part of 1944 and sent in troops to occupy the country. A pro-Nazi government was put into place, the Arrow Cross Party, and this is when Hell began for the Jewish people of Hungary. They were rounded up and placed in ghettos though out the country with very little food or provisions to survive.

In May of 1944, the deportations of the Jews began, and, this is the most staggering fact, over 430,000 Jewish people were deported to Auschwitz in a time period of ten weeks! Marc and I were shocked as we read these numbers, shaking our heads in disbelief. In addition, Auschwitz, probably the most infamous of the concentration camps, had 1.3M people pass through its gates; of which, 1.1M were killed. Of those people killed, approximately 33% were either Hungarian citizens or deported from Hungary.

The Hungarian citizens weren’t limited to only people of Jewish descent. There were people of Romanian descent who fell victim to the atrocities. Most of these people were simply poor, living life as vagrant gypsies roaming throughout the countryside looking for work. Even before the Arrow Cross Party takeover these people were victims of government raids and forced to work as laborers or participate in military events—their freedom and dignity was frequently violated. They too became victims at Auschwitz.

We took our time walking through the museum, shocked by what we were seeing, but at the same time we are aware of the unfortunate history from books, including “Night” by Elie Wiesel, that we read during our trip. When we finally exited the museum and continued our walk through the city we reflected on what we saw. How could we as humans let this happen?

Then, you look at the news today, and you see the tragic events in Darfur. The World is letting genocide happen all over again—haven’t we learned from our mistakes?