Heroes' Temple, Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park and the Tree of Life
Why is it significant?
Through the railings on Wesselényi utca, look into the garden behind the Great Synagogue. A weeping willow stands there, made of steel, its branches bowed, every one of its thousands of silver leaves engraved with a name. This is the Tree of Life, the heart of the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park.
Key Facts
| Place | Heroes' Temple, Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park and the Tree of Life |
|---|---|
| Address | Wesselényi utca 7, 1074 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.49640, 19.06110 |
| Part of Walk | Three Synagogues and a Tree of Life: Budapest's Jewish Quarter from Gozsdu to Dohány Street |
| Generated | Generated |
Through the railings on Wesselényi utca, look into the garden behind the Great Synagogue. A weeping willow stands there, made of steel, its branches bowed, every one of its thousands of silver leaves engraved with a name. This is the Tree of Life, the heart of the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park.
Beside it rises the Heroes' Temple, a smaller domed synagogue built in 1929 to 1931 by László Vágó and Ferenc Faragó. It remembers around ten thousand Hungarian Jewish soldiers who died fighting for their country in the First World War. Hold on to that number. Twenty-five years after those men died for Hungary, their families were deported from it.
The tree is the work of the sculptor Imre Varga, unveiled around 1990. It was paid for with the help of a foundation set up by the actor Tony Curtis, whose father came from Hungary, and the names on the leaves are those of victims of the Holocaust, added by families who wanted them written down somewhere. Nearby, memorials honour the Righteous Among the Nations, rescuers like the ones you have met today, and above all the man who gave the park its name.
Raoul Wallenberg came to Budapest from Sweden in July 1944. Like Lutz, he issued protective passes and set up Swedish safe houses, and he is credited with saving thousands of lives. In January 1945, as the Soviet army took Pest, he went to meet its commanders and was taken into custody. He never came home. The Soviet Union later claimed he had died in prison in 1947; the truth has never been fully established.
This is where the walk ends, at the back of the synagogue where it began, above a garden that holds graves of the ghetto winter. Look at the leaves move when the wind catches them. When the ghetto was liberated, tens of thousands walked out alive, and every one of the rescuers you met today was a single person who chose to act. Stay as long as you like... and when you leave, Erzsébetváros is waiting outside, as alive as ever.