9-23-09 Continued...

The House of Terror is a museum and a memorial. The building was once the headquarters of the ArrowCross and Nazi parties in Budapest and was subsequently used for interogations, thus having prison cells and torture chambers constructed in the basement. Innocent civilians were accused, tortured, and even murdered. When we first walked in I heard somber music playing - a very depressing string piece - and I simply could not stop the tears from liberally flowing down my cheeks. It took me about 10 minutes to gather myself (we hadn't even bought the tickets before the misery overcame me), and all the while I was baffling over how humans can be so cruel to other humans.

We learned a lot about the political climate of Hungary from the 30s through the 90s, with a focus on the Arrowcross party, the Nazi domination during the 40s, and the communist regime that followed and its severe consequences in the late 40s through the 50s especially.

The museum was very creatively put together. It was a combination of video, audio, photographs, artifacts, and reconstructed scenes. Although the guards did not want us to take pictures for some reason (isn't the communist regime over..?), Jack snuck in some shots. An interesting example of the museum's imaginativeness was a room that had eight flat screens in it, four on each side directly across from each other. The TVs showed various clips of people talking about the deportations that took place. On one side of the room, wives would tell their stories of how their husbands were taken away from them forever, leaving behind eight or ten children for the woman to raise with hardly any food to give them. Then we'd hear a man begin to talk and we'd twirl our heads around to watch the TVs on the other side of the room, men share their experiences of their hardships at the labor camps. The men and women took turns speaking and as a result we were constanlty turning around and changing the focus of our attention. I belive it was meant to provoke a dizzying feeling. At last all eight TV screens showed video of the countryside passing by at a fast clip, the video was shot from a train. The sound of the noisy train whipping over the tracks was loud. The countryside was a passing blur. It was as though we were being deported ourselves.

I learned a great deal about the communism government in Hungary during the 40s and 50s. Almost every room of the museum provided documents that gave information relevant to that room's theme (i.e., "Double Occupation," "Life in the 50s," "Propaganda," "Resistance") and I read every one so that I could really absorb a lot about the history. The museum was absolutely well done.








Carpet






Propaganda