A Walk in Budapest

What does authoritarianism look and feel like? Lynne Golodner probes this question in her evocative essay about a visit to Budapest.

First stop: Medieval Jewish Prayer House—Középkori Zsidó Imaház

American historians say Hungary’s political system is dangerous, but conservatives find inspiration in its Christian government. I expected dark shadows in Budapest storefronts, people yearning for freedom. Instead, I found old stones with Hebrew etchings of familiar names, Jewish memory on the hilly side of a fast river.

The fourteenth century sanctuary is small, wooden chairs like sentries, Jewish stars a lattice, like clasped hands linking generations. On a modern Shabbat, old men pray timeworn words.

Ceilings rounded like Jerusalem architecture, just a four-hour flight from Holy Land. I came to Budapest to visit my son. Is it brave to return to the Eastern European killing fields my ancestors fled? My twenty-first century son looks for beauty in its stone streets, but my soul remembers.

Hebrew letters inked onto the plaster in this medieval synagogue: a priestly blessing in David’s shield, Hannah’s prayer arched with an arrow. The bows of the mighty are broken; those who stumble are girded with strength. Red secco ceiling painting discovered during a 1964 restoration. Ancient words evoking an Ottoman siege of the nearby Buda castle. Jews defending our neighbors, desperate to blend.

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Everywhere, the color red: in a velvet mantle over the prayer podium, in a drape hiding ancient scrolls. The color of blood, sacrifice, danger, courage. Also, the color of passion, and anger.

This synagogue sits on a residential street behind a typical door, blending into a stucco landscape of sunrise yellow, summer peach, ballet pink. Congregants gather in a cobbled courtyard, too like the hidden coves in this city where Jews were shot. But here, no plaque commemorates the dead, only tilting tombstones bearing familiar names. No stories, only evidence that they lived. It’s a working synagogue come Friday dusk and Saturday dawn, a museum all the other days, paying homage to dead Jews.

We started here on our tour of Jewish Budapest, foreshadowing the story of my people in Hungary: we would visit an equal number of exquisite sanctuaries and cold memorials. To be a Jew is a pendulum-swing existence, a constant living in extremes, a balance of horror and beauty. In this city, I ate matzoh ball soup and goose-stuffed cabbage in fashionable restaurants with names like Mazel Tov and Rosenstein. I clapped at a klezmer concert on a Friday-night stage in the most cosmopolitan district. As if we had made it into the popular culture.

One day, an old lady on a tram said she preferred Hungary to the United States. Hungarians believe in God, she said, and Americans love money. She studied economics in Washington, DC, when she was young. Now eight-five, she’s at home in her authoritarian country. This place brings her comfort, but I couldn’t wait to leave. My son appreciated the public transportation, and how cheap everything was. A country in flux: absolute adherence to rules, and short supply on everything.

I came to Budapest on Election Day in a midterm year, wanting to avoid the results, for fear of extremists erasing democracy. But I couldn’t escape. I landed in Europe to scrolling headlines: extremism defeated by candidates preaching justice for all. I settled into my seat and eased into a dreamless sleep.

Second stop: Shoes on the Danube

Thick boots, simple pumps and baby tie-ups bolted into concrete. A memorial of a moment, of Jews ordered by Nazis and eager Hungarians to step out of their valuable leather and wait for the bullets to kill them. Men, women, children, lovers, friends, families, shot, their limp bodies falling like dominoes into cold water, floating away in a red-stained river.

A bronze plaque, flush against the concrete, reads: to the memory of the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross Militiamen in 1944-45, erected 16^th April 2005. They were Jews, damnit. I want to scream into the open sky. A cleansed message with no mention of the reason these precious people were murdered. Gunned down, one after another after another falling limp against the cold and lonely earth.

This famous memorial sits in the shadow of the Hungarian Parliament, politicians just out of sight. You have to know the site is there to find it, descend wide steps toward milky-gray waters. No signs lead to horror.

In the rainy cold, squirming teenagers and barking teachers shuffle past the shoes. Are they oblivious because of their age or because they’ve consumed too much harsh memory? Do they even know the truth? Who does their teacher say died here, and why?

I wait for their noise to dissipate before kneeling, hot tears on wind-cold cheeks.

It’s not hatred that kills good people. It’s the not-knowing what to do with difference.

I would never vacation in an authoritarian country. But my son was studying math education in an old building with a Jewish star in its courtyard. So I slept in a nice hotel in the heart of a bustling city and tried to see past conflicting histories. Nothing screamed fascism. I never saw Viktor Orban and found the Communist ruin bar sort of hilarious. I could almost believe in safety.

Third stop: Monument to the victims of the German occupation by Péter Párkányi Raab, Szabadság Square