BUDAPEST -- Back in the early 1990s, I picked my way through Budapest's enormous main Jewish cemetery, trying to find the grave of Lipot Baumhorn, an architect who was long-forgotten but whose body of work once held pride of place in cities and towns the length and breadth of Hungary.

Dzialoszyce, Poland

The first time I visited Dzialoszyce, a dusty village about 50 kilometers northeast of Krakow, an elderly woman approached as I stood with several companions, gazing at the gaping roofless ruin that had once been the town's grand synagogue.

She mumbled a few words of Yiddish in our direction, then apologized that it had been such a long time since she had spoken that language.

BUDAPEST -- Back in the early 1990s, I picked my way through Budapest's enormous main Jewish cemetery, trying to find the grave of Lipot Baumhorn, an architect who was long-forgotten but whose body of work once held pride of place in cities and towns the length and breadth of Hungary.