Street Art and Interiors

This is an unusual work of street art. Mostly, we are used to see murals or the occasional statue, standing free in a square. This one celebrates a rare human being, Carl Lutz. Wikipedia tells the story...

Lutz was born on 30 March 1895. ... Appointed in 1942 as Swiss vice-consul in Budapest, Hungary, Lutz soon began cooperating with the Jewish Agency for Israel. He issued Swiss safe-conduct documents that enabled almost 10,000 Hungarian Jewish children to emigrate, and saved over 62,000 Jews.^[1]

Jewish people waiting in line at the Glass House (Üvegház) in Budapest, 1944. This photograph was taken by Agnes Hirschi, Carl Lutz's daughter.

Once the Nazis took over Budapest in 1944, they began deporting Jews to the death camps. Lutz negotiated a special deal with the Hungarian government and the Nazis. He gained permission to issue protective letters to 8,000 Hungarian Jews for emigration to Palestine.^[8][2]

Lutz deliberately used his permission for 8,000 as applying to families rather than individuals, and proceeded to issue tens of thousands of additional protective letters, all of them bearing a number between one and 8,000. He also set up some 76 "safe houses" around Budapest, declaring them annexes of the Swiss legation and thus off-limits to Hungarian forces or Nazi soldiers. Among the safe houses was the now well known "Glass House" (Üvegház) at Vadász Street 29. About 3,000 Hungarian Jews found refuge at the Glass House and in a neighboring building.

One day, in front of the fascist Arrow Cross Party militiamen while they fired at Jews, Lutz jumped in the Danube River to save a bleeding Jewish woman along the quay that today bears his name in Budapest (Carl Lutz Rakpart). With water up to his chest and covering his suit, the consul swam back to the bank with her and asked to speak to the Hungarian officer in charge of the firing squad. Declaring the wounded woman a foreign citizen protected by Switzerland and quoting international covenants, the Swiss consul brought her back to his car in front of the stunned fascists and left quietly. Fearing to shoot at this tall man who seemed to be important and spoke so eloquently, no one dared to stop him.^[2]

Thus, we have a special memorial to a very special man. 

Up next is a street mural inspired by Sharbat Gula, the Afghan woman made famous on the cover of National Geographic in 1985. This is not an image of her but is an image suggestive of her and the many women who found themselves in the same situation.

Since we have walked the streets of Budapest now for a total of four months or so on our two trips, it was interesting to get an opportunity to visit the insides of several these older buildings. While the interiors are not often in very good shape, as the exterior suggests, it is clear that these were once fashionable and pleasant places to live.

You can tell by the egg and dart moulding atop the columns and the detailed ironwork displayed in the handrails that these spaces once housed people of some social station and money.

The decaying stairs in these buildings reminds me of the episode in the movie Allegro Non Troppo...

Jean Sibelius's Valse triste: a solitary cat wanders in the ruins of a large house. The cat remembers the life that used to fill the house when it was occupied.^[3] Eventually all of these images fade away, as does the cat, just before the ruins are demolished.

I felt a connection to the years of greatness and pain this great city has endured.

My guide tells me that these apartment buildings were for regular folks and that the rich lived in large houses nearer the river. Perhaps these were places that folks that you and I might have lived. But there is an elegance here. The sweeping curves, the utilitarian ironwork, and the spacious stairwells all suggest that people here lived a good life. At least until they didn't. And when they didn't, it was very bad.