The Hungarian capital has become a haven for tourists from the Hebrew state, who flock to its vibrant Jewish Quarter.
Joshua Marks
(JNS)
One chilly winter night in Budapest, from our hotel room overlooking the iconic Váci Street, we were taken by surprise to hear a group of young Israelis enthusiastically singing “Am Yisrael Chai!” (The People of Israel Live!).
But in hindsight, we shouldn’t have been so astounded. After all, we were in Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary—a country that staunchly supports Israel at a time when much of Europe seems to be turning against the Jewish state.
Hungary’s stance—notably free of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment—marks a remarkable shift, especially considering the country’s horrific history. Eight decades ago, some 565,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
As Israel continues to fight back against Iran and its regional terror proxies following the Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, Hungary’s unwavering support stands out, embracing Israel while other nations have distanced themselves from the Jewish state.
Hungary’s welcoming atmosphere towards Israelis is no coincidence. Flights from Tel Aviv to Budapest are now packed, thanks to Orbán’s embrace of his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his firm stance against the wave of radical antisemitic migrants that have plagued Western Europe, terrorizing Jewish communities in cities like Amsterdam, Paris, and London. Hungary has avoided such issues through its tough border policies.
Just days after the Hamas assault on Israel, Orbán affirmed that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and made it clear that Hungary would not tolerate rallies or demonstrations supporting “terrorist organizations.” He also invited Netanyahu to Budapest last month despite the arrest warrant issued for him by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which Orbán called “outrageously brazen” and “cynical.”
Critics of Orbán suggest that his pro-Israel position is more about political strategy than sincere philosemitism. While Hungary did ban the annual neo-Nazi “Day of Honor” gathering in Budapest in 2022 as part of ongoing actions against far-right extremism, concerns persist over the continued glorification of the country’s Nazi-allied history by far-right nationalist factions.
During our short visit to the capital, however, we saw no signs of National Socialist symbols, including those associated with the pro-Nazi Hungarian Arrow Cross party.
What a relief it was to walk through a European city and see no anti-Israel graffiti, no Palestinian flags, no angry demonstrations calling for the destruction of Israel with chants of “from the river to the sea.” The only river people talk about in Budapest is the serene Danube, which holds a memorial to the Jews who were shot and thrown into its icy waters by Arrow Cross militiamen during the Holocaust. “Shoes on the Danube” is a haunting memorial of cast-iron shoes, commemorating those Jews who were forced to remove their shoes before being killed by the fascist henchmen.
Despite concerns about historical revisionism, it is evident that Hungary does not shy away from acknowledging its role in the Nazi genocide, as highlighted in recent remarks by the mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, confirming the country’s awareness of its dark past.
Budapest, with its stunning beauty, is a city that surpasses its Central European neighbors Vienna and Prague. Unlike other cities in Europe, where mass migration has fueled tensions, Budapest feels notably safe and calm, especially for Israelis, who can speak Hebrew freely, without fear.
A journey through Budapest’s Jewish Quarter
Our tour of Budapest’s historic Jewish Quarter was one of the highlights of our visit. It is located on the Pest side of the Danube (Buda and Pest, pronounced Pesht, were unified as Hungary’s capital in 1863) and tells the story of Hungarian Jews: centuries of tradition, religious differences, and ultimately, survival. The Dohány Street Synagogue (also known as The Great Synagogue), built by Neolog Jews in the 19th century, stands as a grand testament to the Jewish presence in Hungary. It is the largest synagogue in Europe and the fourth largest globally, drawing tourists from around the world.
Completed in 1859, just five years after construction began, this Moorish Revival masterpiece accommodates 3,000 people.
In 1996, American-Jewish philanthropists Tony Curtis, a Hollywood legend born Bernard Schwartz, and Estée Lauder, the cosmetics pioneer born Josephine Esther Mentzer—both of Hungarian Jewish heritage—donated $20 million to fund the synagogue’s restoration.
The synagogue’s history is intertwined with Budapest’s Jewish past, from its flourishing cultural contributions to the horrors of the Holocaust. It even served as a makeshift cemetery during the Holocaust, when bodies piled up in the ghetto that once surrounded it.
Before it became a synagogue, a residential building stood on Dohány Street. It was there, in 1860, that Theodor Herzl, the renowned Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and father of modern political Zionism, was born.
The synagogue was bombed on Feb. 3, 1939, by the Arrow Cross Party. Under the leadership of Ferenc Szálasi, this extremist and antisemitic movement held power briefly, from Oct. 14, 1944, to March 28, 1945. During its reign, tens of thousands of Jews were murdered or deported to concentration camps. The synagogue was repurposed during the Nazi occupation, serving as a German radio base and even a stable, and it suffered significant damage from aerial bombardments, particularly during the Siege of Budapest.
The Heroes’ Temple, a part of the synagogue complex, was built in 1931 to honor the 10,000 Jewish soldiers and officers who lost their lives serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I.
Outside the synagogue gates this year, yellow ribbons and posters serve as a somber reminder of the Israeli hostages still held by the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. These displays reflect the deep sense of solidarity and shared concern between Jews in Israel and Jews now living in modern Hungary.
Throughout the Jewish Quarter, Stolpersteines, or “stumbling stones,” are embedded in the pavement as poignant tributes to the victims of the Shoah. These small brass plaques bearing their names, birth and death dates, and where they were killed, typically mark locations where the victims once lived.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, between December 1944 and the end of January 1945, as many as 20,000 Jews from the Budapest ghetto were taken to the banks of the Danube River by Arrow Cross militiamen. They were shot in the head, their bodies falling into the river. To conserve ammunition, groups of three were tied together with wire and only the middle person was shot, the weight of their corpse dragging the others down into the icy waters.
Neologs, Status Quo Ante and the Orthodox
The Neologs maintained traditional religious practices while embracing a more liberal ideology. They sought to strike a balance between Orthodox Judaism and the German Jewish-style Reform movement, incorporating innovations such as conducting prayers in Hungarian rather than Hebrew. Guided by influential rabbis like Aron Chorin and Leopold Löw, Neolog Judaism became a forerunner of the modern Conservative or Masorti movement, which is now primarily centered in North America.
Among the three Jewish factions of the late 19th century, the Neolog movement was the largest and built the most impressive synagogue.
The second group became known as the Status Quo Ante Jews, whose synagogue, the Rumbach Street Synagogue, was constructed in 1872 in the Moorish Revival style. Initially planned for the Neologs, it became the spiritual center of the Status Quo Ante community after the schism in Hungarian Jewry between 1869 and 1871. In 2021, the synagogue underwent a significant renovation, funded by a grant from the Hungarian government.
The third group, Orthodox Jews, continue to worship at the Kazinczy Street Synagogue, completed in 1913.
Today, both the Chabad and Reform movements are active in Budapest, as well, serving the needs of the largest Jewish community in Central Europe and one of the largest in Europe, with an estimated 100,000 members. Most members of the community currently identify as Neolog.
A complex legacy
Hungarian Jews faced one of the most devastating fates of any Jewish community in Europe during the Holocaust, with mass deportations and murders occurring late in the war, even as Soviet forces advanced and Hitler’s defeat seemed inevitable. On March 19, 1944, German forces occupied Hungary, a Nazi ally, marking the beginning of the systematic annihilation of Hungarian Jewry.
After the Nazi occupation of Hungary, SS officer Adolf Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust, was assigned to oversee the deportation of 550,000 Hungarian Jews to extermination camps, with the cooperation of Hungarian authorities. Between May 15 and July 9, 1944, Hungarian gendarmerie officers, acting on orders from German SS officials, deported nearly 440,000 Jews from the Hungarian provinces using more than 145 trains. Most were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the notorious Nazi death camp in Poland, where the majority were murdered upon arrival.
By the end of July 1944, the Jewish community in Budapest remained virtually the only intact Jewish population in Hungary. Tragically, during the Nazi occupation of Budapest, the once-vibrant Jewish Quarter was turned into the Jewish Ghetto. It existed from Nov. 29, 1944, until Jan. 18, 1945.
In November 1944, the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross regime rounded up tens of thousands of Jews and confined them in the Ujlaki brickyards in Óbuda. From there, they were forced on brutal marches to labor camps in Austria. Thousands perished from exposure to the bitter cold or were executed en route.
The remaining Jews, more than 70,000 people, were crammed into the Budapest Ghetto, a densely packed 20-block area in the city’s seventh district. Conditions were dire, with nearly half of the ghetto’s population succumbing to starvation, disease, or execution. The bodies of those who died were buried in the courtyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue, a deviation from Jewish burial practices, as the sheer number of deaths left no other option.
The harsh reality of the ghetto is still evident today through a reconstructed section of the original wall, which stood from November 1944 until its destruction in 2006. This remnant can be found at the back of a courtyard at 15 Király Street. Rebuilt in 2010, it retains some of the original barbed wire that once separated the Jews from the rest of the population.
A fragment of the ghetto wall is also displayed at the Mazel Tov Restaurant, an Israeli eatery serving delicious Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes in Budapest’s historic Jewish Quarter. The restaurant, part of the city’s vibrant “ruin bar” scene, is located in a formerly abandoned building and offers live music to complement its atmosphere. Nearby, we also passed the Tel Aviv Café, one of several Israeli- and Jewish-themed spots in the area.
Across from the Dohány Street Synagogue, a sidewalk marker serves as a memorial to the boundary of the former ghetto.
Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish heritage: A historical overview
While exploring the Jewish Quarter, we came across a plaque honoring the Sephardic Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, situated beside a restaurant and café named after him.
The memorial to Spinoza, born in Amsterdam in 1632 to crypto-Jews who had fled Portugal, serves as a reminder that although Hungarian Jews today are predominantly Ashkenazi, during Spinoza’s lifetime, most Jews in Hungary were Sephardic. This was due to Hungary’s long period under Ottoman rule, which lasted nearly 150 years until the Austrian Habsburgs took control in 1686.
As noted by eSefarad, Budapest once had both a Sephardic and a Mizrahi synagogue. The Sephardic synagogue catered to Spanish and Portuguese Jewish refugees, while the Mizrahi synagogue was home to Syrian Jews. Over time, as their numbers dwindled, these communities gradually merged with the Ashkenazi population—a trend that occurred throughout Eastern Europe. The website also mentions that other regions of Hungary, Transylvania, and Romania once had Sephardic and Mizrahi populations.
In a 2019 article for JewishGen, Nancy Siegel highlighted how Sephardic Jews settled in Hungary, forming a prominent community in Buda that existed independently for nearly 200 years before being absorbed by the Ashkenazi Jews.
Additionally, in Bekeczaba, Hungary, a tradition persisted that many Jews there were descended from Mizrahi Jews who had come from Armenia and originally hailed from Iraq and Iran. Recent genetic testing of the community in Bekeczaba seems to support this claim.
Peter Hagyo-Kovacs, in his work “DNA, Magyar Israel and the Mizrahi Synagogue of Dohany Utca,” suggests that the Middle Eastern influences in the planning and design of the Dohány Street Synagogue are a subconscious reflection of this Mizrahi past.
Tony Curtis, in his autobiography, also recalls his family’s Middle Eastern origins, mentioning that his father’s family was described as “dark-skinned” when they passed through Germany. Hence, they got the last name Schwartz (“black” in Yiddish).
Jewish history in Hungary, however, extends far beyond the medieval era when Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews diverged. During the Roman Empire, evidence of a Jewish presence can be found in Roman garrisons and the seat of Pannonia Inferior, the civic town of Aquincum in present-day Buda, part of the district of Óbuda. According to The Jewish Face of Budapest by Peter Rozsa, Jews lived in scattered communities across the region as early as the second and third centuries.
The 1996 book The Jews of Hungary by Raphael Patai further reveals that inscriptions from Roman Pannonia, particularly along the Danube, indicate the presence of Jews, including a notable epitaph for Septimia Maria, a Jewess (Judeaea). Jews from Antioch and Hemesa (modern-day Homs) were among the Syrian soldiers stationed in the region.
Only in the Middle Ages, however, did Jews appear in Hungarian territory in large numbers.
Rediscovering Roots through DNA
The Holocaust devastated what was once one of the largest and most vibrant Jewish communities in Europe. Of the 200,000 Jews living in Budapest at the start of World War II, only around half survived the brutal Nazi and Arrow Cross violence. The city was liberated by Soviet forces on Feb. 13, 1945.
Hungary’s Jewish population, which once exceeded 800,000, was reduced to just 200,000 after the Shoah. Many of the survivors later emigrated to Israel, North America, and other regions.
As noted by the Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, “only a fraction of Budapest’s shrinking and aging Jewish population is tied in any way to communal life. With the rising tide of intermarriage and indifference to religion and Zionism, Budapest Jewry faces an uncertain future.”
Could modern genetics help breathe new life into Hungary’s Jewish community?
A 2008 DNA study revealed that up to 20% of the populations in Spain and Portugal carry Sephardic Jewish ancestry, a legacy of the forced conversions to Catholicism in the 14th and 15th centuries when Jews became known as conversos. More surprisingly, a 2019 MyHeritage DNA study found that Hungary has the second-highest proportion of Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity after Israel, where the Jewish people originated. Based on 1.8 million DNA tests from 100 countries, the study found that 18.3% of Hungarians have some Ashkenazi roots, trailing only Israel’s 51.6%. Furthermore, 7.6% of the 4,981 Hungarians tested had at least 25% Ashkenazi ancestry—equivalent to having one Jewish grandparent—far exceeding the 3.5% in the U.S. and 3% in Canada.
Once a city scarred by the Holocaust, Budapest has emerged as a vibrant hub of Jewish culture. Its warm embrace of Israeli visitors and the resurgence of Jewish life are a testament to the resilience of the Jewish people.
Featured Image: A tram riding along the Danube River on the Pest side of Budapest, Hungary, Dec. 7, 2024. Photo by Joshua Marks.
