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BUDAPEST, Hungary -- You do not walk alone through Budapest's Holocaust Memorial Center.
You walk with ghosts.
Indeed, the center's permanent exhibit, which finally opened in February at the 2-year-old facility, feels less like a museum display than a journey into darkness.
Unlike the exterior courtyard, which is constructed of geometric pillars of beige stone, the lines of the inside exhibition, From Deprivation of Rights to Genocide, are deliberately distorted, the architecture echoing the immorality of a world come unhinged. That world will be recalled by the Jewish community and others worldwide during Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts at sundown on Monday.
The exhibit opens with the haunting sound of wedding music. But there is no sign of the bride and groom; in their place are everyday objects -- a doll, a teacup, a candlestick -- whose owners disappeared, their identities unknown. A traditional museum might have presented the collection on pedestals or in a wooden display cabinet. Here, the items are enclosed, almost imprisoned, in a forest of individual glass columns, each of which tilts at an unsettling angle. The artifacts, set against glossy black walls, floors and even ceilings, seem to glow with an otherworldly light.
The room is filled with images of the irrecoverable. The stories of nine families -- eight Jewish, one Roma -- are told in audiovisual presentations in English and Hungarian. Their fates are revealed as visitors progress through the exhibit, which documents how Hungarians allowed -- and even joined -- the murder of more than 500,000 of their fellow citizens. These lives are symbolized by horizontal pinstripes of light, which surround the exhibit, lining the walls and leading the way to each new room. The lines gradually thin and, by the close of the exhibit, cease altogether.
The exhibit ends inside the sanctuary of the Pava Street synagogue. After the angular and disorienting exhibit halls, the traditional architecture of this expansive room -- with its warm, ivory walls, gold-trimmed windows and high, domed ceiling -- feels startlingly light, bright and even liberating. The altar, the candles and the stained glass in the sanctuary seem familiar, even comforting.
But this is a place of mourning as much as reverence. All but a few of the old wooden pews have been replaced with rows of clear glass benches, each of which bears the name and photograph of a Holocaust victim. The presence of these souls is palpable; the synagogue is a memorial not merely to individuals, but also to a community of faith that was nearly extinguished from the earth.
The mere existence of the synagogue today is a triumph of the spirit. Built in 1924 by Jewish families in the surrounding neighborhood, it was transformed into an internment camp in 1944 and 1945. Victims were rounded up here and sent on death marches to the west, says Szilvia Dittel, a teacher and guide at the center. In the center's words, Hungarian Jews were "expelled from society with a speed unparalleled in the history of the Holocaust," with 437,000 people deported in 56 days. Nearly all of them were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.
Although a few survivors returned to the synagogue, not enough were left to sustain a house of worship. The community eventually abandoned the building during the communist era, leaving it empty for 30 years, Nagy says.
The government-funded memorial is just one attempt by the city to come to terms with the Holocaust, which was rarely mentioned during communism. It helps identify Holocaust victims and has engraved 100,000 names on a 26-foot-high reflective glass wall to honor those whose names will never be written on tombstones. Researchers at the center can help visitors locate the names of victims on the wall.
Visitors can do their own research on the period as well, through more than 10,000 documents on the center's computers. The facility works hard to train teachers and attract schoolchildren. One of the goals of the permanent exhibition, says Rita Nagy, a senior consultant, is to document not just Hungarian suffering during the Holocaust, but also the ways in which the country first deprived certain citizens of their rights and, later, assisted in their murder.
Other expressions of remembrance include a sculpture of a weeping willow by artist Imre Varga, which stands in the cemetery next to the Dohany Street synagogue. Names of the fallen are inscribed on each of the willow's steel leaves.
Still another is a row of 120 iron shoes, unveiled by artist Gyula Pauer last April 16, Hungary's national Holocaust remembrance day, to honor the hundreds of Jews who were shot and thrown into the Danube. The unlaced shoes, boots and high heels, representing those taken from victims moments before their deaths, are arranged on the riverbank as if their terrified owners had just stepped out of them.
The Holocaust center's permanent exhibition has attracted 8,000 visitors since February, Nagy says. It expects another 40,000 to 50,000 this year.
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