as the post-Communist country prepares to join the European Union.
"I think we need to be united in our Jewishness in a new way," said Gusztav Zoltai, director of the Associations of Jewish Communities in Hungary, at a congress of European Orthodox rabbis, BosNewsLife monitored Sunday, September 14.
Seventy European Orthodox chief rabbis attending the meeting remembered the 600,000 Hungarian Jewish Holocaust victims at the Wallenberg Park in Budapest on Friday, the Hungarian News Agency MTI said.
WALLENBERG
Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat after which the park was named, has been credited with saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jewish people during World War Two when Hungary was for the most part a staunch Nazi ally.
Since the collapse of Communism, Jewish leaders, churches and politicians began a dialogue to overcome the wounds of history, in a country which still has no Holocaust museum. "If we neglect to take advantage of the historical opportunity before us, we haven’t a chance of survival," Zoltai said during the ceremony.
There has been some concern among Jewish leaders however about a rise in anti-Semitism and ultra right wing sentiments in Hungary. The rabbis later visited the recently renovated Budapest’s main synagogue on Dohany Street, described as the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world.
Zoltai told MTI it was the first time that Orthodox rabbis visited the recently renovated synagogue, since 1867-68, when the Orthodox, Conservative and Neologue Jews split in different groups.
