Hungarian Cemetery

A Promise To Keep In A Budapest Graveyard

STEVE LIPMAN

A section of the overgrown Kozma Street Synagogue before Michael Perl’s cleanup project got going, top. Above, the restored section. Photos courtesy of Michael Perl

As a 13-year-old middle school student from Sydney, Australia, Michael Perl visited Hungary for the first time in 1984 with his Hungarian-born, Holocaust survivor father. They walked around Budapest’s sprawling Kozma Street Jewish cemetery, where Perl’s great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents and “many other relatives” are buried.

The grounds, says Perl, who moved to the United States 20 years ago and works as a portfolio manager, were in good shape. “It left a deep impression on me.”

Eight years ago, Perl went back to the cemetery again. Most of the 190-acre site was now overgrown with trees and above-ground roots and weeds, and the gravestones were covered with ivy; the area was largely impenetrable. “You could not walk in most of the sections. You had to jump over trees and under bushes.

“I decided that I wanted to do something” to improve the condition of the cemetery, Perl said one recent afternoon, sitting in an office of his investment firm in Midtown.

After spending a few years balancing the needs of his business with research on the basics of cemetery renovation, Perl, now 48, kept the promise he made to himself.

Working with Marc Pinter, a Swiss-born resident of Budapest who shares his interest in the city’s Jewish cemetery, Perl arranged for the project to begin in mid-October. A group of workers — including paid employees, altruistic volunteers and a small group of Hungarian prisoners who were grateful for the opportunity to work outside —  began clearing the debris and overgrowth and cleaning the gravestones of one cemetery section, using tools donated by Germany’s Stihl power equipment manufacturing firm.

Michael Perl, the founder of Friends of the Budapest Jewish Cemetery.

They finished in seven weeks, completing renovations in three sections, in which around 5,000 people are buried — about 4 percent of the area his project hopes to cover.

With a break now for the winter, during which work would be difficult, Perl is concentrating on fundraising for the Friends of the Budapest Jewish Cemetery (budapestjewishcemetery.com), which he founded to coordinate his volunteer work. Renovations will resume in the spring.

Perl estimates that the entire project will take three to four years, and cost nearly $1 million.

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