The Jewish Chronicle

By Adam Lebor

Budapest municipal officials have halted demolitions and alterations in the city’s Jewish quarter after a lengthy campaign to save the historic area.

Jozsef Gergely, the deputy mayor of the city’s District VII, announced that no new permits would be issued for any construction work in the area until the end of May, by which time the Cultural Heritage Protection Agency would decide which of the buildings would be listed.

Budapest is home to mainland Europe’s third-largest Jewish Community, which is some 100,000 strong. It is also the only city in eastern Europe to have retained a thriving Jewish quarter predating the Holocaust. The narrow, atmospheric streets which reach back from the Great Synagogue are still home to Jewish shops, several synagogues, a kosher butcher, bakery and restaurant.

However, the quarter’s downtown location has also made it particularly attractive to property developers, many of whom, ironically, are Jewish or Israeli.

Numerous art-nouveau and late-19th-century buildings have been demolished and historic courtyards flattened to be replaced by ugly modern blocks or garages.

Narrow lanes are dotted with new concrete eyesores or gaping holes in the ground.

Over the last few years, young urban conservationists have been battling property developers to save District VII and neighbouring District VI. OVAS, an organisation which campaigns to save the city’s Jewish Quarter, estimates that more than 40 per cent of the area has been demolished or irretrievably altered.

Orsolya Egri, of OVAS, told the JC : “On the one hand we salute this decision to stop further demolitions, but the record of both councils in districts VI and VII is very poor and we don’t trust them.

“We have heard so many speeches about commemorating the Holocaust, but these are hollow words when the victims’ former houses are being demolished.

“If the people are gone at least their houses can be preserved.”

OVAS is calling for a strategic vision and preservation plan for the Jewish quarter, as happened in Paris with Le Marais, which is now a prime tourist site.

Many of the streets border the historic Andrassy Avenue, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Earlier this year more than 300 people, including writers, intellectuals and mayors, signed an open letter from the French Association for the Promotion of Hungarian Culture in Paris to Hungary’s President Laszlo Solyom, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany and Budapest Mayor Gabor Demszky.

They issued a clarion call for the authorities to institute a moratorium on all building and demolition works and for a city-wide plan to renovate the quarter to be drawn up.

Mr Gyurcsany has also called for the area to be preserved : “I would happily encourage the mayors to do more. The Jewish Quarter is an important part not just of Budapest’s cultural heritage but the entire country’s.

“It would be a real sin to sell off our culture for money.”