Exactly 70 years to the day since Jews in Budapest were forced to move to houses bearing a large yellow Star of David, some of the buildings still standing have been opened up to the public.<br /><br />Songs were sung and poems recited in front of the so-called ‘Yellow-Star Houses’. Holocaust survivors like Hajnalka Radó were among those attending.<br /><br />She says her entire family was killed when Hungarians allied to Nazi Germany helped to deport half a million Jews to death camps.<br /><br />Asked how she managed to stay alive, she said: “I escaped from one place to another. I was hiding here and there and I was still young at the time.”<br /><br />With education a key reason for the commemoration, organiser István Rév of the Open Society Archives institution, said: “We can’t live in a city if we don’t really know where we live and we don’t even think about it and if we don’t face our own history.”<br /><br />Many of the buildings housed hundreds of people, with several families crowded into each apartment. Time and again fascist commandos raided such houses, killing dozens of Jews at a time.<br /><br />Seven decades on, with the rise of the far-right, anti-Semitism remains a sore point in Hungary.<br /><br />Our correspondent Andrea Hajagos said that out of the 2,000 one-time ‘Yellow-Star” houses,1,600 still exist. Today thousands of people live their everyday lives in those buildings in Budapest. She has just learned that she is one of them.
