Hundreds of rabbis from all over Europe are expected to gather Monday in Budapest for the annual conference of the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE), an organization dedicated to assist rabbis across the continent.
On Monday afternoon, the RCE will hold a memorial ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the murder of Hungarian Jewry by the Nazis. The ceremony will take place on the banks of the Danube River at the memorial "Shoes on the Danube Promenade".
The memorial contains of 60 pairs of iron shoes, forming a row of about 40 metres. It is a commemoration dedicated to the victims of the fascist Arrow Cross party who shot the people right into the rive. The victims had to take their shoes off, since shoes were valuable belongings at the time.
According to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, some 568,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
The ceremony at the Danube river enbankment will be attended by the Chief Rabbis of Israel, Yitzchak Yossef and David Lau, Israel’s Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs, Eli Ben Dahan, members of the local Jewish communities and representatives of the Hungarian government.
The ceremony will be followed by an event honoring the European rabbis and the local Jewish community during which keynote speaker will be Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.
"It is not always easy to by a Jew in Europe as well as in Hungary, at the same time our task is to send a message that Jewish life is reviving in one of the oldest communities on this Continent,’’ says the RCE.
‘’The hundred thousand Jews of Hungary are returning to their roots. More and more Jewish schools open, abandoned synagogues reopen. In the past few years, the voices of anti-Semitic ideology have become lauder in the country. The conference is aimed at showing support to the Jewish community, and to the majority of Hungarians who experience with fear the negative developments,’’ said Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who heads the RCE and the European Jewish Association (EJA).