Saving Budapest's Jewish Quarter One Building at a Time

Saving Budapest's Jewish quarter - one building at a time

BUDAPEST, March 2, 2006 (AFP) - It survived the horrors of Nazi occupation and the neglect of communism, but Budapest's old Jewish district is facing a new threat: greedy real estate developers bent on razing historic buildings.

Since 2002, six tenements in this maze of streets have been demolished, giving way to spanking new apartment blocks and office buildings. Some are twice as tall, intruding sharply on the bygone grace of the late 19th-early 20th century facades.

"The old buildings are disappearing," complained one of the local activists fighting the trend, Orsolya Egri. "Instead of destroying them we should remember our past and cherish what we have."

Egri is a member of OVAS, a group formed in 2004 to protect this neighborhood whose history they fear could be silenced by demolitions.

The group claims credit for rescuing eight buildings so far through protests and public awareness programs. But it warns that another 25 others are threatened with demolition on these narrow lanes that still echo the past.

The neighborhood, in Pest on the eastern side of this capital that straddles the Danube, was the birthplace in 1860 of Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl, whose ideas led to the creation of the modern state of Israel.

Later, it was the focus of another sort of visionary -- Hitler sidekick Adolf Eichmann who oversaw the Holocaust. When Eichmann was stationed in Budapest, his agents had an office here -- while Swiss and Swedish diplomats Carl Lutz and Raoul Wallenberg were busy elsewhere in the city issuing documents that saved thousands of Jews from Nazi deportation.

It was also here that 70,000 Jews were herded in 1944 into a central ghetto, where thousands died of starvation, disease and arbitrary execution.

But thanks to the city's liberation by Soviet troops in January 1945, the Budapest ghetto became the only one in Europe whose people were spared mass deportation and death in concentration camps.

Of late the area has become an eclectic mix. Upscale stores selling designer furniture share the sidewalks with family kosher restaurants and the many synagogues that dot the area.

At night, it is a favorite with young Budapest intellectuals who seek out trendy watering holes tucked inside courtyards of crumbling buildings, too deep into the labyrinth for tourists to find.

"These buildings survived the world war, they survived four decades of communism, but they cannot survive greed," said Mihaly Raday, a respected expert here on architectural protection.

He and other critics also point a finger at what they call complacent officials who, instead of financing the restoration of dilapidated buildings, give realtors free rein to raze the old and build new structures that offer a higher return on investments.

As with other parts of the capital, the buildings here fell into general neglect under four decades of communism.

"I am outraged at the demolitions and the absence of any planning on how to preserve our architecture," said Julia Kishegyi, a 53-year old doctor who has lived her entire life in the same building on the edge of the old Jewish quarter.

Just a stone's throw away from her apartment, the latest demolition is taking place at 40 Kiraly Street.

District officials gave permission to raze the building without notifying the city's Cultural Heritage Bureau as required, according to the bureau's head, Kalman Varga.

Raday charged that "realtors skirt the law with the consent of district officials in order to speed up construction," but municipal officials -- who have wide-ranging powers to decide on local real estate development -- were unavailable for comment when called.

Meanwhile the movement to save buildings in this district keeps swelling.

Culture Minister Andras Bozoki was among the latest to come on board, with a stinging open letter two weeks ago to the mayor of the sixth district where Kiraly street is located.

"The case of 40 Kiraly Street -- like the case of the former Jewish district -- is more important for me than a few legal paragraphs," he wrote.

"Where we cannot advance with the tools of the law, only our common sense and responsibility for our cultural heritage can help. This is why I ask you to stop the demolition of the building," Bozoki appealed.

OVAS may have scored a new success, though it is too early to tell.

In a temporary reprieve, the Budapest prosecutor's office suspended the demolition of 40 Kiraly Street last week, citing irregularities in the authorization of the permit.>