You should be at the Holy Union Temple by now, and as you see from the block of houses it’s on, its just behind the massive building complex from the Ceausescu era.Like the Great Synagogue we just saw, this one—inaugurated in 1852-- no longer functions as a house of prayer, but the good news is that like the Great Synagogue, it has been lovingly restored and both of them function as Jewish museums.Let’s take a look inside: It’s definitely smaller and less grand than the other two synagogues on our tour but it is no less lovely.Here we have another barrel-vaulted sanctuary and two women’s balconies. Spread throughout you’ll find display cases with historical photographs, artefacts, paintings and maps.While the exhibitions are well worth your time, it’s the bema, or altar, in front of you that is a fine piece of architecture, with hand carvings, marble columns, and even the use of electric yellow neon tube lighting that arcs around the altar. As you stroll around, you’ll also see some beautifully carved Judaica of brass and wood.Do take the time to visit this fine museum, and we have two more pieces for you to listen to.We have two more pieces to share with you, and in this museum, you will see photographs and read descriptions of the Bucharest pogrom of January, 1941, which took place between the 21st and 23rd of January.To set the stage: In September, 1940, King Carol II fled the country and General Ion Antonescu became prime minister. Antonescu brought into his coalition the extreme right wing Iron Guard, who almost immediately began planning a coup against him and the Romanian army.On the evening of 18 January, 1941, a group of German officers was dining in the Café Bucharest, and a man walked in and shot one of them dead.That was the match that lit the fire, and the Iron Guard and Antonescu’s army went at each other with pitched battles on the streets. In short order the Guardists began prowling through the Jewish quarter and turned their blood lust on a completely defenseless populace.Emil Dorian was a doctor, a novelist, a translator and a diarist and here’s an excerpt from his memoir, The Quality of Witness. Keep in mind that he wrote this diary entry only one night after the pogrom had ended and so let me read it for you.What happened in Vacaresti, Dudesti, and the surrounding neighborhoods is indescribable. And there is no need to describe it. Suffice it to list the destruction, the looting, and the bestial crimes. But even that is impossible, as new details come to light every day. The extent of the tragedy is not yet known.The exact number of the dead and missing cannot be established. We will never know the maddening details of their end, of their fear before the end. The fury of the looters has not spared anybody or anything. Shop after shop with shutters wrenched off their hinges, windows smashed, walls burned, rooms emptied—it is impossible to tell what had been there before. The mind cannot grasp how looting bands were able to wreak such utter destruction in so short a time: drugstores without a trace left of bottle or glass, barber shops with smashed mirrors in layers on the floor—a barber's chair left in the middle, looking alone and puzzled like someone alive and lying on their side.Here’s a store littered with watches ground to powder. Next to it, an old woman crying in the middle of a store black with soot, empty. A gutted movie house, a photo studio, a restaurant, a lamp shop, a shoe store—all empty, walls charred.In the middle of the street a car and on its seat an abandoned prayer shawl.The madness of destruction and crime descended on the homes as well. Everything that could be carried out of the houses was stolen, the owners beaten, some murdered.A synagogue burned down. Another one. The majestic Sephardic synagogue has been completely destroyed. They set it on fire with cans of gasoline placed in its four corners, and the looters danced by the flames. Countless Jews were taken from their homes by Iron Guard bands and led to several spots in the city where they were slaughtered.