Hungarian woman planning Budapest Shoah museum visits Yad Vashem

Museum at transit point used to send Jews to Auschwitz will have a focus on the fates of young people during the Holocaust.

By HENRY ROME
JOZSEFVAROS train station 370 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
JOZSEFVAROS train station 370
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
A Hungarian museum director visited Yad Vashem last week to get inspiration for the creation of a Holocaust memorial museum in Budapest.
“It made such an impact on me,” said Maria Schmidt, who visited Israel on Thursday.
“It’s such a great responsibility [creating the Budapest museum], so I am a little bit afraid.”
The museum will be located at the Jozsefvaros train station in the Hungarian capital and will open in April. During World War II, the station was a transit point used to send Jews to Auschwitz.
“It’s a special task, to show the people what happened at that very train station,” Schmidt said.
The Hungarian government has allocated some NIS 80 million for the museum’s creation, as part of a series of projects to commemorate next year the 70th anniversary of the extermination of Jews in Hungary.
Schmidt is known in Hungary for directing the House of Terror museum that recounted the fascist and communist eras in Hungary.
The museum at the train station will have a focus on the fates of young people during the Holocaust and will aim to attract young audiences, she said.
Targeting young people could go a long way toward tackling anti-Semitism in Europe, Schmidt said.
“I think if you get the attention and the heart of the...students, it will make an impact on the whole people,” she said.