Holocaust Memorial Center Budapest

Holocaust Memorial Center, Budapest - darkometer rating : 7 - A modern memorial site in Budapest comprising of a restored synagogue, an outdoor memorial complex and an indoor documentation centre with a museum exhibition that chronicles the history of anti-Semitism, especially the plight of the Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust and the build-up towards it. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews in Europe have a long history, but of course it reached its very worst in the 20th century during the Holocaust . Budapest and other cities in Hungary had thriving Jewish communities. The destruction of Jewish life in the Nazi era esp. during World War II took a somewhat different course in Hungary compared to other Eastern European countries (such as, in particular, Poland – which suffered the worst of it). Herein lies the particular tragedy of the Hungarian Jews: namely that while they too were subjected to discrimination and persecution in the build-up of Nazism in the 1930s , they largely escaped the full-scale genocide that Germany was pursuing elsewhere in the 1940s … until as late as 1944. Up to then, the Hungarian government, though officially siding with Germany in the war, resisted full participation in the Holocaust . While the German Nazis ’ extermination campaign of " Operation Reinhard " (the most industrially murderous part of the "final solution") was raging in Poland and had already all but eradicated the European Jewry, Hungarian Jews were still comparatively safe. The Hungarian government could point towards Italy where Mussolini , up to then Hitler 's closest axis ally, also failed to partake in the full-scale genocide.