This Hungarian Horror House Is All Too Real

Nothing she learned in school prepared university student Aniko Istvan for the experience of visiting a new museum here called the House of Terror, dedicated primarily to recounting the brutality of Communist rule.

“Many people think about whether it’s good to recall this horrible period, but I think yes,” Istvan, 23, said after touring the elegant mansion that was used as an interrogation and torture center, first by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party and then by Communist secret police in this former Soviet bloc country.

“I think I can step forward in my life if I know what happened in the past 50 years,” she said. “I think this house describes that period more accurately than what I learned at the university.”

Despite its blunt name--which to some might sound like an amusement park “horror house” or imply a relentlessly heavy-handed approach to displays--the feeling upon entering the building is that of a somber memorial. Funereal music plays, candles are set out in memory of victims, and a softly crying man on a video screen declares, “We can forgive them, but we can’t forget it.”

The central hall displays a Soviet tank, with the walls beside it covered by 3,600 photographs of victims who suffered or died under Nazi or Communist terror, not necessarily in this building.

Basement Cells Have

the Greatest Impact

For many visitors, the highest-impact part of the museum is the basement, where various types of cells have been reconstructed, including one so small that the prisoner couldn’t even lie down, and another with water on the floor, so the prisoner was always wet. On a desk in one room are simple electric tools for torture by shocking or burning.

In some other parts of the museum, there was no need for reconstruction. One room, which has fearsome-looking clubs hanging on the wall, is a “real place where people were tortured,” said Bertalan Havasi, a museum spokesman. “Sometimes victims remember, ‘This was my cell.’”

Much of the power of the museum comes from the fact that so much suffering took place within its walls.

Ferenc Barbicz, 78, looked somber yet fully composed after finishing a tour. But when asked his reaction to the displays, tears welled in his eyes, he held up three fingers and struggled to speak. “Three of my friends suffered here,” he finally said. “Under communism. I’m looking for names, from 1947 and 1948.”

An elderly woman declined to say anything after her tour except, “I’m so shocked, I wouldn’t like to talk now.”

“Some members of her family were here,” her husband explained after she walked away.

“Finally, everything became public that was forbidden to think about before,” said another visitor, Lukits Bela, 80. “All the sufferings and problems of the country are concentrated in one place now. I saw most of it myself. We mustn’t forget, because it’s a part of history, and everything that belongs to Hungarian history shouldn’t be forgotten.”

Large sections of the museum take a strongly historical approach, often using old films.

The first exhibits examine the brutal 1944-45 period of Nazi occupation and puppet rule by the Arrow Cross Party. Hungary was an ally of Germany from the start of World War II but maintained some independence until 1944, when direct Nazi control brought a sharp increase in terror and the deportation to death camps of most Hungarian Jews.

The Soviet Red Army forced the Nazis out of Hungary in 1945. With Soviet support, Hungarian Communists gradually seized dictatorial power over the next two years.

Key to that effort was Communist control of the state security police under Peter Gabor, who had his office in what is now the museum.

Walls Stir Memories

of Prisoner Rail Cars

One long, narrow exhibition hall has wood-slat walls meant to recall the railway cars used to ship prisoners to forced labor in the Soviet Union. Another room shows a Communist propaganda film on the trial of Imre Nagy and other leaders of Hungary’s 1956 democratic revolution, which was crushed by Soviet forces.

There also are displays of colorful propaganda posters depicting both political themes and consumer goods, while another room shows equipment used for wiretapping.

The museum employs a film crew, a psychologist, 11 full-time historians and 25 outside historians. A key part of their work is to conduct filmed interviews with victims, to be added to the archives, said research director Gabor Kiszely.

“The museum tries to make an obstacle in the way of recurrence of the two most horrible dictatorships that occurred here,” Kiszely said.

Although the facility is controlled by a public foundation, the creation and running of the museum have been funded by the center-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Some suspect that Orban’s interest was motivated in part by a desire to discredit the rival Hungarian Socialist Party. That party, which led a center-left coalition to victory in recent parliamentary elections, was formed in late 1989 out of the old Communist Party.

One exhibit plays a video of Orban’s speech at the museum’s opening. In it, he declares, “We have to tell our children that both dictatorships were systems forced on us by foreign armies.”

Museum Gives

‘Objective Background’

Kiszely said the museum has no political overtones but rather gives “objective background and information.” He, however, acknowledged some concern that the incoming Socialist-led government might try to cut off funding.

“We have very good international connections all over Europe,” Kiszely said. “Similar institutions aren’t closed down. If such a thing were to happen, that the Socialist Party wants to close down our museum, then I think that our good friends and colleagues abroad would raise their voices.”

Gyorgy Temesszentandrasi, 30, a physician, said after touring the exhibits that he “was kind of crying all the way.”

“I didn’t expect such emotions,” he said. “We stepped into a place where in reality all these things happened.” One gets the feeling that you “can smell ... the blood on the wall,” he said.

After her tour, university student Istvan spent time using a museum computer to look at additional information but said she still felt shaken.

“I’m shivering,” she said. “When I go outside, I’ll be happy the sun is shining on me and I can breathe the clean air.”