One of my favourite ways to spend time is to view a city through a flaneur's eyes. On the day in question I'd planned to visit the Jewish sights of Budapest, some lighter than others.
It had occurred to me a couple of days previously that the same cobbles I was walking along may be the very same ones Nazi troops marched across, and I'd found that a difficult thought to hold.
I've known from a young age that my only a few generations ago my family was Jewish. In fact my ignorant father used to make antisemitic comments about my Mum's side of the family. Charming.
I slipped into the Orthodox Synagogue through a cobbled side street and a delightful old lady gave me a guided tour of the stunning building. She explained all the symbolism, told me all about the Torah, and then calmly told me that during World War 2 the Nazis used the Synagogue as horses' stables. She grinned as she told me the Jews had hidden the main treasures behind a metal wall, and the Nazis hadn't bothered to look behind. A triumph indeed, but such desecration to let animals shit in the house of God. Such hatred.
The Jewish people have been persecuted many times throughout history, being viewed as less than human so very often. How evil we are as a race never fails to surprise me. I've had a fascination with Judaism for as long as I can remember, and recall asking my RE teacher at the tender age of 12 how I could convert. Mr Gent kindly explained it wasn't that simple, and so when Charlotte in Sex and the City did just that for love I was green with envy, that she became the Jewish woman I had wanted to be.
I've recently discovered Kindle for the iPhone. It 's a great way of keeping me entertained throughout the long stretches of sleepless night, without completely waking my eyes by putting the light on. Before I left for Budapest I downloaded a number of books by people I know, one of which being my great-aunt's memoirs. My Mum had warned me she had used this platform to romanticise her marriage to a Mills and Boon standard, but despite this caveat I found myself being drawn in to these tales of her life, particularly the war time years. She talked about how her father, the gentleman who converted from Judaism to Christianity for love, had seen what was going on in Germany, and paid for a family of Jews to leave the country while they still could. Amazing in itself, but he never acknowledged it, simply stating 'one does what they can'. How proud I am to call this man a forefather, and how much I owe to those from generations before mine so I can idly post online about my Jewish heritage, without having to fear for my life.
Back to the present time, and my day took several twists and turns, and late afternoon I ended up in a museum of Jewish Heritage. It didn't exactly sound thrilling, but interesting nonetheless. I'd paid for a tour, and the elderly gentleman leading us around smelled of lunchtime wine, and a prerehearsed script.
The rooms of the museum were hot, the subject matter pretty dry, even to the most interested of us, and a few of the group became tired and irritable to be shown yet more paraphernalia. As lovely as the man was, even I was getting restless, and when he told us about his latest grandchild we feigned interested smiles.
The last room of the museum was dedicated to the holocaust. The guide had showed us around half the exhibition when he casually showed us a picture of people being herded into a concentration camp. And then even more casually mentioned this was the camp where his father died.
It wasn't mentioned lightly to belittle the fact, or to underplay the emotion behind this information, or to underwhelm. This brave man conducts this tour day in day out and has found a way to integrate his personal experience without overwhelming the visitor.
He later went on to explain the story of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish man who rescued tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi occupied Budapest by giving them Swedish passports. He then casually explained that this was how he, his mother, and his maternal grandparents had escaped the slaughter.
The group of us seemed to all exclaim a sigh of disbelief simultaneously, each finding it hard to believe this jolly man had experienced the greatest horror of the 20th century first hand. He had each of us sitting in the palm of his hand during those final minutes.
After the tour I stopped and thanked him for his time, and for sharing his story. He showed such interest in my life, and when he learned I was from Birmingham he told me about his visits during Thatcher's Britain, as the miners were being shafted and the economy turned to shit. "A difficult time" he told me, "but that was when my daughter was born, and she bought such happiness to our lives that the rest didn't matter".
Such humbleness, and such a profound sense that love and family are all that really matter in life. I said some earnest thank yous, and stumbled out of the museum in a daze. I finally let the tears fall, the tears for that amazing man, his extraordinary life, and for those that hadn't been so lucky.
I went and sat in the garden at the Synagogue, a mass grave, where the thousands of murdered Jews, who died inside the ghetto, were buried upon liberation.
There's a Jewish prayer called Kaddish, recited when Jews die, and then on the anniversary of their death. Sadly there aren't enough relatives remaining to say Kaddish for those who have gone before, so I said it there, to help at least one poor soul rest. It felt like the least I could do. Then I turned on my phone, and texted my Mum to tell her how much I love her.
It's not every day you meet a holocaust survivor, but as trite as it sounds I feel like I left a piece of my heart with him forever. Tomorrow I plan to get a tattoo of the star of David, to show my pride of my heritage, and how lucky I am that so many gave the ultimate sacrifice so I am able to open talk about this heritage.
Shalom.
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