The Memorial Museum of Hungarian Jewry in Safed was one of the best parts of our weekend. All I knew about Hungary in the past I learned from Bandi Gut, who taught me a great deal about fashion, about computers, about engineering and about cursing, but very little about his background. And yet it must have been significant, since I have been searching for his and his father’s history since we connected to internet, in 1985.
And one day not long ago we found some correspondence of the family with the Hungarian museum from way back. So even though we were in a bit of a hurry to get home, we stopped for a visit.
The museum is really a gem, with every aspect of Jewish life in Hungary covered. The integration of the Jewish population into the general culture is evident here, and I am not surprised that Bandi’s father, Arpad Gut, about whom I have written in these pages, was a noted builder of public institutions that are still respected today, such as the thermal baths at Budapest’s Hotel Gellert the water tower in siofok, the iron bridge at Oroszfalut and the Brick works at Granitgyar. It was only when he walked back from Keirgestan where he’d been a prisoner during WWI, and saw that the mood was changing, that he took his family and left for Palestine.
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