BUDAPEST, Hungary – Israeli President Moshe Katsav will attend the
opening of Hungary’s first Holocaust museum in a ceremony linked by
satellite to commemorations of the Holocaust in Poland, the United
States and Israel.
The Holocaust Museum and Documentation Center will open in a former
synagogue in downtown Budapest on April 15.
The renovated synagogue was built in 1923, transformed into a
factory during World War II and later abandoned. Since the old
synagogue will be used for exhibits and conferences, a small, new
synagogue is being built on the premises for the neighborhood’s
Jewish community.
The opening ceremony will take place simultaneously with events at
the Holocaust Museum in Washington, the site of the former
Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland and at the Yad Vashem
Institute in Jerusalem.
Nazi-allied Hungarian authorities started rounding up Jews in April
1944. About 600,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
