In Hungary, it took 46 years for the Neo-Renaissance building at 60 Andrássy Avenue to be truly reborn. In the winter of 1944, the Nazi Arrow Cross moved there in order to torture hundreds of Jewish compatriots in the basement of their ‘House of Loyalty.’ And in 1945, Hungarian communists arriving under the protection of Soviet tanks established themselves there, so that Hungary’s secret police—the ‘fist of the Party’—could decide who was a friend and who was a foe. It was only after the October 1956 Revolution that the organisation—whose defence of the communist state was paid for with the suffering and violent deaths of thousands of innocent people—left its palatial headquarters on Budapest’s most beautiful avenue. By then, the walls had absorbed so much pain and suffering that time and history would embed the building’s dark genius into the subconscious of the city.
A museum instead of revenge
“There is enormous power in this building,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said, on February 24, 2002, at the opening ceremony for the House of Terror Museum. He went on to note that establishing the museum is, “a way of signing an agreement with history. … The reason we need museums like this is not to give our children a direct personal experience of fear, terror, and humiliation that will make them shudder. We want our children to grow up in Hungary knowing what was endured by those who went before them. We want our children to understand that freedom is not given for free.”
It was a historic milestone. At that time—just over a decade after the fall of communism—Hungary was the first country to open a museum and memorial site that placed side by side the two totalitarian dictatorships that had been imposed between 1944 and 1989. Mária Schmidt, professor of history and founder of the House of Terror Museum, was convinced that Nazi and communist crimes had shared roots, and Hungary had experienced both. After decades of silence, there emerged a place where the protagonists in Hungary’s collective history, the victims, and the perpetrators, have been named—and not by framing history in ideological terms, but by asserting only the traditional values and interests of the national community.
It was a heretical idea in a country where, after the end of communism, the post-communists continued to fight battles of succession for control of the past. From the outset, this elite feared the very existence of the House of Terror Museum, because it could lead to the disintegration of the Left’s remaining myth, the undermining of its fragile legitimacy, and its inability to control the past. The members of the vanguard had learned the Orwellian dictum that, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
More than 150,000 people attended the opening of the museum in 2002, their candles bathing Andrássy Avenue in light. But the commercial television channels and the following morning’s newspapers sent a very different message: they spoke about political provocation, hatred, and fearmongering. The creation of the museum was characterised as a campaign stunt. It was as if those who did not want the past to be encapsulated in a museum had prepared their reports in advance. Its opponents first used aesthetic and legal arguments to attack the facade and the ‘blade wall’ or ‘mourning frame’ bounding the street front. They criticised the choice of site, the historical concept, and the museum’s name. They questioned the professional credentials of the exhibition’s creators and the expertise of the curators of the public foundation overseeing the museum. They claimed that the House of Terror Museum is not a museum at all, but an exhibition. Suspecting irresponsible spending, they investigated the museum’s expenditures. They threatened to implement financial and organisational changes. Plans were drawn up to rename the museum, reorganise its exhibitions, and ‘swell’ its board of trustees with more ‘politically independent’ and more ‘qualified’ historians. By then, the House of Terror Museum had already been under attack for months; long before its opening, it was targeted with objections that would be repeated again and again over the following years.
Organised political and ideological attacks
The systematic smear campaign waged against the House of Terror Museum started months before the official opening, before anyone had even seen its displays with their own eyes. Mátyás Eörsi—currently a member of former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s Democratic Coalition, the largest opposition party—said that the museum’s “method of construction is terrorist” and that the aesthetic message of the building itself “is terrorising, if the descriptions are to be believed.” Some wrote of the “defilement of the entire city,” although their panic was in vain, because Andrássy Avenue became a World Heritage Site. Members of the vanguard described the museum as “spectacular historical kitsch,” a “terror plaza,” and a “house of horrors.” As soon as the museum was unveiled and everyone could see the Arrow Cross, the five-pointed star, and the word ‘TERROR’ all placed side-by-side at parapet level, they launched their full offensive. The Hungarian Socialist Party—the successor party to the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party—reported the museum management to the authorities, on the grounds that they were using illegal symbols of totalitarian regimes. The relevant legislation, however, clearly stipulated that the symbols could be used for scholarly and educational purposes.
From 1944 to 1956, the building at 60 Andrássy Avenue was an important site for two totalitarian dictatorships. The location has become intertwined with the concept of terror in Hungary—partly because of the shocking historical experiences associated with it, and partly because people were compelled to remain silent about them. What happened at 60 Andrássy Avenue could not be spoken about for decades. Since then, generations have grown up that have no direct experience of either terrorist system, but historical remembrance has preserved for them the tragic memory embodied in the building. Hungarians treated it like so many of the other oppressive legacies that burdened their daily lives. It belonged to a suppressed, unresolved part of the past. With the creation of the House of Terror Museum, the founders sought both to initiate shared reflection on the past and to begin the grieving process. As Nobel laureate Imre Kertész warned, without remembrance, there is no reconciliation and no closure.
The creators of the museum were able to distinguish the building from its surroundings so that everyone could see that it was the house of terror. They created a wide, horizontal platform cantilevered out from the building’s cornice, out of which they cut the symbols of the two terrorist dictatorships and the word ‘TERROR.’ When sunlight shines through these voids, it projects onto the facade the totalitarian symbols and the word ‘TERROR.’ The shadow cast on the walls—painted grey to evoke the secret police that once occupied the building—symbolises the terror that cast a shadow on lives and everyday activities. The entire frontage is in darkness when the sun is at its highest, evoking the title of Arthur Koestler’s novel, Darkness at Noon. But the projected symbols fragment as they move across the facade of the building, which has become a monument to the victims of dictatorships. This indicates that what they symbolise no longer has power over those victims. The building is bordered by a black mourning frame, so that everyone can see that it has become a monument to the victims. The sight evokes the memory of dictatorships; yet it also signals that we need no longer fear it; we can enter through its portal, and it will reveal its secrets to us.
Entering the museum, one is greeted by two huge vertical slabs of polished granite, identical in form but not in colour: one is red and the other black. The red slab commemorates the victims of communist terror, while the black one commemorates the victims of Arrow Cross terror. The structure of the exhibition begins with the Nazi and Soviet occupations and ends with the final withdrawal of Soviet troops. On two floors, the museum shows the nature of the Arrow Cross and communist periods of terror from 1944 to 1963. The basement reconstruction commemorates the victims of both anti-human dictatorships, and the names and photographs of those who served both regimes are displayed on the Wall of the Perpetrators. The exhibition has broken with the organisation principles typical of museums: it presents only the most essential data and instead appeals to emotions with images, sounds, films, text extracts, and objects from the period.
The post-communists’ political attacks on the exhibition had already been made as early as January 2002 (before the museum was completed). They alleged that the exhibition does not deal with the interwar Horthy era, and thus effectively rehabilitates it; it does not deal with the tragedy of Hungarian Jewry, as it does not present the Hungarian Holocaust; it exaggerates the crimes of communism; it extends the communist era of terror up to the fall of communism; and it shifts the responsibility of Hungarian evildoers onto foreign occupiers. Some claimed that it is anti-Semitic, because it emphasises the role of Jewish revenge, while others accused it of cowardice for not discussing the role of Jews in the communist secret police terror.
The accusations are unfounded, as the museum deals with the tragedy of Hungarian Jewry through photographs and film footage displayed in several rooms. More detailed discussion of the Hungarian Holocaust does not appear for several reasons: (1) before the museum was established, the first Orbán government had already decided to establish the Holocaust Memorial Center on Páva Street; (2) the Hungarian Holocaust cannot be presented either as a prelude or supplement to the history of the building; (3) the Holocaust is a Hungarian and pan-European tragedy that can only be portrayed in an independent presentation; (4) last but not least, it would have been misleading to present the tragedy of Hungarian Jewry in a building that became notorious primarily as the headquarters of the communist dictatorship’s terror organisations.
In parallel with criticisms of the historical concept, there have been claims that the museum’s location is inappropriate. Historian Mária Ormos said that “It’s a sick idea, like building a temple to Satan.” Ormos did not elaborate, so we can only conclude that she had probably never heard that there are places and sites that are almost predestined by their specific genius loci to be designated as museums or memorials. In any case, there were also those who said, “This building symbolises neither Arrow Cross nor communist rule.”
The exhibition’s “Farewell” room depicts Soviet troops’ withdrawal from Hungary, the reburial of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs, the visit of Pope John Paul II to Hungary, archival footage of protests against the destruction of Transylvanian villages, and images of the demonstration against the Danube barrage project. The aim is for visitors to leave the museum feeling liberated. The images refer to the present age, showing a democratic, free country: a Hungary, where an occupying army is no longer stationed, and where its free citizens can express their political convictions without fear.
The museum’s director-general, Mária Schmidt, was not excluded from the smear campaign, and attempts were made to humiliate her at a professional and personal level. Some described the museum as “the objectification of the idea of a very confused mind.” Later, this theme was elaborated further: “When I called the House of Terror the brainchild of a mad mind, I did no more than summarise the impression of Maria Schmidt that I had gained from the print and electronic media. … Someone who is not an extremely hard-working and high-achieving scholar.” The writer went on to say, “It is obvious that we are dealing with a crony from the academic world.”
The purpose of these opinion pieces was not to provide balanced information or to generate substantial professional debate. Instead, they sought to discredit the museum, and everyone connected with it, in the hope that this would bring about its downfall. One of the recurring themes was the allegation that it was created for party political purposes, and that its opening was timed to coincide with the start of the government’s campaign for the upcoming election. But many people felt that the opposite was true: that the incessant series of unrestrained attacks before and after the opening of the House of Terror Museum fitted perfectly into the brutal, aggressive campaign of the opposition MSZP (Hungarian Socialist Party, originally Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party), which revived memories of the Left’s demonstrations of force so typical of the era of the one-party state. In many elderly people, old fears were revived, and old reflexes were triggered; even now, it is inadvisable to talk about these things.
After the parliamentary elections of 2002, the post-communists formed a government, which immediately ordered an investigation into the management of the public foundation running the House of Terror Museum. This put political pressure on the creators. At the same time, a new audit of the financing of the museum’s creation was launched. Both investigations, like the State Audit Office investigation completed a few months earlier, concluded that the use of public funds had been in accordance with the law.
On October 17, 2002, Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy paid an unannounced and unexpected visit to the museum as a private individual. After visiting the exhibition, he wrote the following comment in the guest book: “Instructive. It is important for young people to become aware of this, and I would like to see it enriched further by showing terror of all kinds. I congratulate you on your excellent work as historians, and on the overall design.” However, on leaving the building, he said, “I would have arranged the proportions differently, and paid more attention to the victims of Nazism, to the persecution of the Jews.”
Medgyessy’s visit was a well-planned campaign stunt timed to coincide with the run-up to the local election campaign, but it was also a sign that both sides could interpret the museum according to their own tastes. The prime minister’s legitimacy had imploded after it emerged that he had been a counterintelligence agent in the communist era, and he obviously found it difficult to walk through the crowded exhibition spaces. Although opinion pollsters found the prime minister’s approval rating to be stable, a huge proportion of the country found it unacceptable for a top-secret officer in the communist dictatorship’s state security service to hold the post of prime minister. The post-communists, veterans of the culture war, targeted both the credibility of the then prime minister and the economic foundations of the House of Terror Museum. They tabled an amendment to cut the museum’s budget by 150 million forints, which was voted through by parliament. At the request of the museum, and for the sake of his own political reputation, Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy committed himself to improving the museum’s financial situation, and the government agreed.
The truth of history
On February 23, 2003, at the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communism memorial event in front of the House of Terror Museum, Viktor Orbán said, “This building is the only honest piece of confrontation with our past … We felt that this building, 60 Andrassy Avenue, the House of Terror, was an abiding source of pain. Today, ever more of us increasingly feel that it is also an abiding symbol of conscience.” People come to the House of Terror Museum both on the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communism and on April 16, the Memorial Day for Hungarian Victims of the Holocaust. Candles are also lit in front of 60 Andrássy Avenue on October 23, on November 1 (All Saints’ Day), and on November 4, the Day of Mourning commemorating the defeat of the 1956 Revolution. The museum building is both a memorial and a monument. It was made a national memorial by those who wanted to remember the victims, the heroes. But it is also a moral and political stand against the spread of ideas that led to political mass murder.
Let us not forget that the main enemy of democracy is totalitarianism, whatever its disguise. Of the two totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th century, Nazism was defeated in war, while communism collapsed. As the distinguished French historian Stéphane Courtois—editor and co-author of The Black Book of Communism—has said:
The maintainers and servants of communism are still with us … The operators of communist regimes were not prosecuted at Nuremberg, nor have they been held legally accountable. But there is another judgement. The judgement of history. This is the museum that declares the accusations. And it does so especially through the eyes of the people who see all the exhibits in the House of Terror Museum, and for whom it holds up a mirror to history as a place of remembrance and as an exhibition.
The House of Terror Museum was the first step in a process by which the post-communists lost what they thought was their unlimited monopoly over the interpretation of the past, the present, and—ultimately—the future. This fact could not be better demonstrated than by the more than seven million visitors who have visited 60 Andrássy Avenue over the last twenty years: visitors who, when they see the exhibition, are confronted with the painful, cruel, and dark horrors of the past.
For the past, as challenging as it is, must always be proclaimed.
