We are out on the Danube (definitely not blue these days) headed down river from Mohacs, Hungary,  after spending most of the day at Pecs, which I had been mispronouncing until today.  The Hungarians say the name with a syllable that somewhere between Page and Petch.  Whatever you call the city, Pecs is a place determined to recover its beauty after the brutality of World War II and then decades of Communist gray drabness.  The people, as good people do time after time, are succeeding in overcoming hardship.  My favorite images are those I took away from the city center.  A cathedral built on Christians ruins dates back to the early days when the Romans brought Christianity to town.  The crypts under the church have been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  

Pecs is a city that has seen cycles of brutality triggered by the hatred and intolerance of one religious group toward another.  The most recent outrage was the murder in World War II of virtually all Jews by Nazis, with some complicity by Christians.  Jews were taken concentrations camps where they were gassed.  Those who didn’t make it to the camps were shot on the streets of Pecs.  A beautiful old synagogue dating from 1868 stands at one end of a small square.  Services are held there once again, but the population of Jews is now very small even after more than half a century has passed since World War II.  

There is also a beautiful old mosque that was originally built by the Ottoman Turks who drove out the Christians and then were themselves driven out.  The mosque became a Christian church.  Beautiful bell towers and steeples rise all over the city, but there is little assurance that eternal peace has settled over the country.