Historic Budapest synagogue to reopen amid Jewish cultural revival

A general view shows the renovated Rumbach street synagogue in Budapest, Hungary, August 15, 2019. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Tamas Irsai was a teenager when he last sang in the choir in Budapest's Rumbach synagogue during World War Two, before most Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps.

Irsai survived the Holocaust but the great majority of Hungarian Jews, including many of his relatives and friends, did not. Under Communist rule, more Jews emigrated and the synagogue finally ceased to be a place of worship, its last rabbi leaving Hungary, after Soviet tanks crushed a 1956 uprising.