From
the Midwest to
Budapest
Tourists can relive terror of communist times
The first thing I see walking out of the subway is a gray building and a metal edging with the word TERROR carved into it. It looms over the street. A row of faces adorns the outside of the building. These are some of the faces of the people who died in the basement of this building before it was turned in to a museum.
The House of Terror is a museum dedicated to the fascist and communist regimes in Hungary, representing two of the bloodiest periods in Hungarian history. The museum is also a memorial to the victims, including those interrogated, tortured, imprisoned or killed in the building.
From the ground floor up, the building was the headquarters for the Nazi party in the 1940s. Shortly thereafter, it was taken over by the Cross Arrow Party, the Hungarian version of the KGB.
The four floors (the basement and first through third floors) of the museum reveal what life was like for inmates under the German Nazi rule and the Russian regime of the Soviet Union. Propaganda used by the ruling party at the time is also on display.
Walking into the museum, the first thing
you see is a tank set up on a pedestal and
thousands of faces in black and white on
the wall. I was told to start on the second
floor and work my way up so that’s exactly
what I did. Moving through the rooms, I
was torn between wanting to stay and read
every letter and not wanting to be by myself.
I floated along with the slowest moving
people I could find and watched the
interviews with the wives who lost their
husbands. I had to read the subtitles
because all of the audio is in Hungarian.
I have never been tempted to cry more in
my life.
The museum tells a story beginning on March 16, 1944, when the Wehrmacht troops and SS units entered Hungary. Nazi occupation lasted only six months before the Soviets came in the fall of 1944. A “puppet government” installed by the Nazis after World War II led by Ferenc Szálasi was set up, and his Arrow Cross Party unleashed terror in the country. The Arrow Cross Party represented Hungary’s Fascist Party.
For me, the most terrifying room came on the third floor. The lights were dimmed, and the walls were covered with Hungarian newspapers full of Nazi propaganda. In the middle of the room was a car covered with a thin cloth draped from the ceiling.
When I entered, the radio crackled to life from the black Sedan that displayed the Nazi insignia on the inside dash. As I listened to the music from the era, long-gone voices were heard. I skirted the outside of the car, as the veil started moving slightly in a nonexistent breeze.It was too much for me being in the dim room all by myself. I slid out of the room.
To get to the next room, there was a maze-like hallway. Muted voices played from speakers at every turn, and I walked as quickly as I could to find another group of people.
The next room was bright and plastered with propaganda from the Communist Party. I sat on a bench and wrote postcards. I didn’t actually have anything special to say to my friends and family, but I needed a moment to collect myself before the next room.
Story by Victoria Fairfield
The next rooms were easier. They held religious relics confiscated from the prisoners. At the end, we had to wait on the elevator for a few minutes. Three other groups packed in with me. There were about nine of us when the doors closed. The lights dimmed, and the elevator started moving. Moments later, a voice in the place of elevator music startled us.
We laughed nervously as the voice continued speaking in Hungarian. We laughed even more when we realized not a single person on the elevator spoke Hungarian.
Our smiles faded when the elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. The basement held the prison where inmates were tortured and killed. The cells were open, but the rusty doors still looked ready to slam shut at any moment. Each room looked nearly identical – cold and damp with a small barred window at the top letting in very little light.
I came across one room that had a pile of shoes in the corner and nothing else. This was it. This was the room they hanged people in. Everything about the room just seemed wrong. It felt like a haze was still hanging over the room sucking the life out of everyone who entered.
When I found the stairs to the first floor, I hurried back to the main entrance. It wasn’t much better on the first floor because I was being stared down by the tank set up on a pedestal and thousands of faces in black and white on the wall.
When I walked outside in to the sunshine,
it felt like days had passed, not just a few
hours.