Kozma utca
Almost outside the city, you'll find what is probably the largest Jewish cemetery in Budapest. Family members, including grandparents, of mine are buried there so we try to visit regularly. But this is not the only reason to go there.
A Jewish cemetery in most of Europe is a special kind of reminder. You will find many tombstones in disrepair, broken, slanted.
This happens when an entire generation disappears. Those could have been the people to look after the tombs of their parents, grandparents.
Most of these people did not leave. Not for Palestine, not for anywhere else. They had been at home here, going back countless generations. And they had worked very hard to integrate in society. They succeeded: the only thing telling them apart was a note on their "religion" in their papers and government records.
Those who were taken and killed are also remembered: this cemetery has a memorial wall not far from the entrance that's shown in the second gallery.
In more peaceful times, descendants like us find time and means to look after the graves again. The close-up in the second gallery shows the tomb of my grandparents. My grandfather on my father's side was lost while being a forced laborer in the invading Hungarian army in Russia, close to Voronezh. The tombstone carries his name but there are no remains beneath.
There will be more about Jewish Budapest on this website.
As always, the photos were taken by me and are included here without any post-processing, except for some slight straightening of slanted images.
This post has two galleries: one from 2016, the other from late 2025.
2016
Late 2025
