The Hungarian government has allocated one billion forints ($4 million) for much-needed repairs on the magnificent Neolog synagogue in Szeged, in southern Hungary, whose massive dome is leaking and in particularly perilous condition.
Csaba Latorcai, deputy state secretary for social affairs, told a news conference at the synagogue on Friday that 150 million forints ($600,000) will be made available within a week for urgent repair work.
The second largest synagogue in Hungary (after the Dohany st. synagogue in Budapest), the Szeged synagogue, inagurated in 1903, is the masterpiece of the Budapest-based architect Lipot Baumhorn, central Europe’s most prolific synagogue architect. A bas relief carving of the dome of the Szeged synagogue decorates the upper portion of Baumhorn’s gravestone in Budapest’s Kozma utca Jewish cemetery.
The building, part of a Jewish communal complex and still used on major occasions by the local Jewish community, underwent extensive renovation in the late 1980s.
According to the web site Hungary Today, Latorcai said that the government “considers it its responsibility to cater for synagogues that form part of Hungary’s common cultural heritage and is open to carrying out the Szeged synagogue refurbishment as a state-financed project.”
Read the full Hungary Today story
See a 360 degree panorama of the synagogue