Budapest's Jewish Cemeteries – a Short Survey of Their Art

105 Budapest’s Jewish Cemeteries – a Short Survey of their Art, Architecture and historical Significance Rudolf Klein Budapest is one of the few European cities to have a substantial Jewish population since Roman times, attested by syna- gogues and gravestones. The first Jews arrived in the area of Budapest in the 2nd century C.E. together with the Roman legions. Jews reappeared in the Middle Ages during the 12th century on the southern side of the Buda Castle Hill and later on its northern tip, indicated by the largest medieval synagogue in Central Europe. A substantial number of medieval gravestones have survived. After the Ottoman Turkish occupation (1541–1686) new Jewish immigrants reappeared in the 18th century, close to the settlement in antiquity in Óbuda, what is today the 3rd District, from where they sub- sequently moved to Pest. In its heyday, around 1900, the Jewish population of Budapest made up 23.6 % of the total population of the city.1 Although decimated by the Holo- caust and by emigration following the uprising in 1956, the Jewish community in Budapest is still vivid, counting some 80,000 –100,000 souls. There are six modern Jewish cemeteries in Budapest, and the informal cemetery of mass graves in the courtyard of the Dohány Street synagogue. Adjacent to the central Christian cemetery of Rákoskeresztúr there is the largest Jewish cemetery in Kozma Street, in which since 1868 over 300 000 Jews have been buried. It has a grand oriental-style Tahara house, constructed in 1891 and based on designs by Vilmos Freund, the architect of imposing neo-Renaissance Jewish palaces on Andrássy Avenue. The Kozma Street or Kozma Utca Cem- etery contains the grave of the Jewish heroes of the 1848 Fig. 1 Béla Lajta, entrance gate to the Revolution, designed by Béla Lajta; the Holocaust Memo- Salgótarjáni Street Cemetery in Budapest, 1908–10 rial, designed by Alfréd Hajós, who was Jewish, an architect and the first Hungarian Olympic champion! This cemetery is still in use and reasonably well kept. Some fallen old grave- In the courtyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue, which stones have been removed and the plot sold to new users. was part of the Ghetto during the German occupation and Close to Kozma Utca Cemetery is Gránátos Utca Or- was closed from October 1944 to January 18th, 1945 (the thodox Cemetery, which was opened in 1922 on 5 hectares liberation by the Soviets), some 8,000–10,000 people out of and contains 5 300 gravestones. Hassidic rabbis, Czitrom, the entire 70,000 inhabitants of the Ghetto died here. Due to Schmuk and Weiss, are also buried here. It is still in use. war operations in the city, some dead could not be brought to Adjacent to the great Farkasréti Christian Cemetery is the Kozma Utca Cemetery and some 2 000 of them were buried still active Jewish section, founded in 1885 and containing in mass graves adjacent to the synagogue between the trees, 2 500 graves on 2.8 hectares. on a territory of some 3 000 square metres. The synagogue’s Hidden between apartment blocks lies one of the oldest courtyard, a representative garden, was initially intended to cemeteries of Budapest, the Csörsz Utca Cemetery, which is give monumentality to the Heroes’ Temple (1931), a small just 10 by 100 meters large and contains 1360 gravestones. modern synagogue designed by architect László Vágó com- A lane divides it into a male and a female section. The last memorating the Jewish heroes who died for the Hungarian burial took place after World War Two. fatherland in World War One . It is ironic how such an archi- The Jewish cemetery in Óbuda is the cemetery of the first tectural gesture was invalidated by history. This compound modern time Jewish settlement in Budapest . It contains the contains the monument to the victims of forced labour and gravestone of Rabbi Mózes Münz and the memorial to the the great monument to the 600,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims of the so-called Fussmarsch .2 victims. 106 Budapest’s Jewish Cemeteries – a Short Survey of their Art, Architecture and Historical Significance Fig. 2 Béla Lajta, Tahara House in the Salgótarjáni Street Cemetery in Budapest, 1908–10 The cemetery in called Andrássy út, inhabited mostly by the Jewish aristoc- Salgótarjáni Street racy.3 While roughly a counterpart to other great European met- Historically and artistically the most important modern-time ropolitan Jewish cemeteries of the period – Berlin-Weißen- Jewish cemetery of the region is the Salgótarjáni Utca Jew- see or the Jewish section of Père-Lachaise in Paris, or other ish Cemetery, on some 55 hectares, established in 1874 and Jewish cemeteries in Hungary – this cemetery differs from closed for burials in the 1950s. This cemetery is adjacent all of them in terms of the entrance gate, the layout and the to the monumental Christian Kerepesi Cemetery on Fiumei graves. út, where great sons and daughters of the nation are buried. The outside surprises the viewer: there is no hint to the The Salgótrajáni utca is a side street of Fiumei út, a gesture Jewish denomination, or even to a cemetery. The entrance which hints to the minority status of the Jews, as their cem- gate, designed by Béla Lajta, lacks any codified Jewish sym- etery is hidden behind the main street leading to the East- bol: no Tablets of the Law, no six-pointed star, and prob- ern Railway Station (Keleti). However, inside the Jewish ably most importantly, no oriental style, which was almost cemetery the hint to minority status vanishes, as grandiose obligatory for entrances to Jewish cemeteries of the period gravestones and mausolea made of marble and often black in Hungary.4 In terms of size and richness the entrance Swedish granite line up the lanes along lush vegetation. gate building, created in the heyday of the Budapest Jew- Interestingly, the cemetery contains some older gravestones ish Community (1908–09), represents a stark architectural relocated from other places during the great regulation of understatement: it is an undecorated, closed mass covered the city in the 1870s and 1880s. They make the mid-19th with stone, with a large pointed arch on the upper floor and century Jewish breakthrough even more evident. a similar one on the ground floor and castle-gate grid (fig. 1). In this cemetery the assimilated Jewish economic and Windows are very small, also with pointed arches above the cultural elite was buried, which contributed to the bloom- gate, like eyes over a mouth. This rough, vertical volume ing Gründerzeit economy of Habsburg Hungary and to containing the caretaker’s flat is covered with a simple hip Hungarian modernity in culture. The graves of great Jewish roof, like a bastion. The medieval touch was prompted by families represent a funeral counterpart to their secular the fashion of Finnish National Romanticism in Hungary architectural activities, the construction of the great avenue between 1905 and 1910.5 Budapest’s Jewish Cemeteries – a Short Survey of their Art, Architecture and Historical Significance 107 Fig. 3 (left) The main lane (“cardo”) of the Salgótarjáni Street Cemetery in Budapest Fig. 4 Baron Hatvany-Deutsch family grave, Salgótarjáni Street Cemetery in Budapest, 1913 Passing the austere entrance gate, one gets to a fore- ish cemetery from its Christian Kerepesi neighbour. Along court . In front towers the beit tahara, also a work by Béla the cardo at the intersection with the decumanus where the Lajta, today lacking the roof and dome, completely gut- cardo narrows, one reaches the grave of Vilmos Freund ted with only the perimeter walls standing, but even as a (1846 –1920) protruding into the intersection and thus mak- ruin still impressive. To the right, one glimpses some graves ing it visible from the entrance. Freund was one of the most buried into the lush vegetation, behind a wrought iron fence important architects of the Andrássy út (avenue); 6 on his also designed by Lajta. The beit tahara (fig. 2) is more grave a bow-compass and a triangle signal his profession. monumental than the entrance gate, with some Hebrew Further to the east are the old, translocated gravestones. At inscriptions, crying-tree motifs carved into the white marble the northern end of the decumanus one glimpses one of the with a slight oriental touch due to the battlement. Instead grandest monuments of the cemetery, the mausoleum of the of the steep hip-roof of the gatehouse, here a dome and a Baron Hatvany-Deutsch dynasty, industrialists and patrons play of different materials soften the building: two com- of modern Hungarian literature and the arts .7 This grandiose pletely closed windowless side projections covered with monument borders the northern perimeter wall of the cem- rough stone, some of them stretching out from the wall etery along with other dignitaries’ graves (fig. 4). A white surface by a couple of centimetres, dispatched in an irregu- marble Greek Doric temple in antis is the centrepiece of a lar manner. Between the side projections, slightly recessed major composition, flanked symmetrically by two staircases in the middle section, towers the central entrance topped that lead to the side walls of the little temple, where the mas- by three little windows which are framed with white mar- sive iron doors lead the visitors into the interior and to the ble. Above them the wall – here brick masonry – closes graves. again . Apart from the Greek, mainly Doric order, other historic Walking through or around the beit tahara one finds one- styles were used less often. The Zsigmond Bródy family self on a little square, from which an eastward lane figures as monument uses Egyptian architectural elements.

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