Jewish Bucharest

On Sunday morning we walked towards the old Jewish quarter of Bucharest. Choral Temple, built in 1857, was undergoing renovations so we couldn't go inside.


The man in the photograph above didn't speak English, but understood where our next destination was, and gave us directions in broken Hebrew. "שמאלה, שמאלה" he said, leading us to the corner. "To the left, and left again." As we approached the street listed on the map, the driver of a large car backing out of a parking lot also indicated to the left. And that is where we found the Great Synagogue of Bucharest.


Bucharest was home to some 40,000 Jews at the beginning of the 20th Century, and its population was not spared the horrors of the Holocaust. Inside the Great Synagogue was a museum telling the tragic story of Romania's Jews in the Holocaust.



The Great Synagogue of Bucharest from the outside.

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