The old Jewish cemetery on Szél street in Veszprém has been restored and transformed into a memorial park, which was formally inaugurated this week. Participants at the ceremony Thursday included Rabbi Tamás Verő, Cantor Gergely Nógrádi, and Hungarian Regional Development Minister Tibor Navracsics, a native of the town, located near the northern end of Lake Balaton.
The 60 million Forint (€160,000) project was funded as part of Veszprem-Balaton’s role as the 2023 European Capital of Culture.
With the completed project, Navracsics said at the ceremony, “an old debt is paid off, a piece of the past is brought back to the present in order to pass it on to the future.”
The ceremony was attended by other VIPS including the Israeli ambassador, Veszprém’s mayor, and other representatives of the Jewish community.,
The cemetery operated from the 1730s until 1882; burials were halted because of the rocky ground, the Capital of Culture web site states. Around 450 people are interred there; the Jewish community uses a newer place of burial. The Nazis deported the Jewish community to Auschwitz in July 1944. A small community was reestablished by survivors after the war.
Before the renovation, the web site states, the old cemetery was “desolate: unfenced and bumpy, with most of the gravestones covered in earth and others lying scattered.” Only 10 percent of the gravestones are believe to survive, according to local media; the cemetery also lost territory when a road was widened.
The Capital of Culture web site says that the aim of the restoration and memorial park is to integrate the cemetery “into everyday life as an intimate place of remembrance, relaxation and contemplation for the population of Veszprém.”
Pictures show the cemetery with a new wall. Headstones and broken fragments have been re-erected and set in short rows scattered around the grassy area.