Hungary’s New Government Haunted by Orban’s House of Terror

The fate of Budapest’s House of Terror, a controversial museum which focuses on life under totalitarianism in the 20th century, could spark another round of the ‘culture war’. A long queue snaked around the corner from the House of Terror, a popular museum on Budapest’s iconic Andrassy Avenue, last week. It was a mixed crowd, foreigners and Hungarians, young and old, who waited patiently to get inside the building. Their curiosity was partly piqued by a recent controversy: for a few days in mid-September, Hungary’s new government abruptly closed the museum – a creation of the previous nationalist-populist one – and dismissed its director general, Maria Schmidt, a wealthy real estate tycoon and ally of former prime minister Viktor Orban. The exhibition has since reopened, but a notice at the entrance warns that its content is being reviewed by a group of historians in advance of a possible revamp. For the time being, however, admission is now free, which is probably the biggest reason for the recent boost in the museum’s popularity. The dungeons in the House of Terror Museum, in Budapest, Hungary. Photo: BIRN Fear and loathing The museum’s name still sends a chill down the spines of many Hungarians. Located in what used to be the secret police headquarters during both Hungary’s Nazi and Communist past, the address at Andrassy Avenue 60 became synonymous with fear, torture and violence. The original concept behind the exhibition was to immerse visitors in the atmosphere of the dictatorships, engaging all their senses through both visual and auditory elements. In the centre, a huge Russian tank points its gun towards a line of visitors. In the narrow atrium, walls are covered with photos of the victims of Hungary’s two dictatorships. There is also a wall featuring perpetrators and victimisers. In a claustrophobic elevator, visitors descend to the dungeons at an agonisingly slow pace, while an executioner’s aide meticulously narrates in a video how people sentenced to death under Communism met their fate. The prison cells evoke the Middle Ages, with suffocating humidity and chilling cold. In the corner, under a dim light, stands the gallows. Over a thousand people were executed during Communisn. On the upper floors, the exhibition displays the harshness of life under Communism: farmers were forced to surrender their crops to the authorities, hardly keeping enough for their families. Wealthier farmer or kulaks were treated as enemies of the people. There is also a labyrinth built with 1-kilogram bricks of lard – which were distributed as part of monthly rations – to illustrate the absurdity of the collectivist regime and general food shortages. The communist system was built on suspicion, intimidation and fear. A giant black car stands behind a thick curtain: when illuminated, it appears like a menacing monster. The mysterious black car has become part of Hungarian family lore – a symbol of the secret police taking away relatives in the middle of the night. Survivors of the dictatorship narrate their stories on screen in black and white. A queue outside the House of Terror Museum, in Budapest, Hungary. Photo: BIRN Controversial from the off The exhibition, although an indisputable commercial success attracting 200,000 to 300,000 people from Hungary and abroad each year, has been controversial from the very outset. Orban opened it during the campaign for the 2002 election, which his Fidesz party ultimately lost, and it was designed to paint his socialist-liberal rivals as the heirs-apparent of the communists. The fathers of two prominent liberal politicians even featured on the museum’s Wall of Perpetrators as members of the brutal communist secret police. Critics accuse the museum of offering a biased and one-sided version of Hungary’s past. The very beginning of the exhibition sets the tone: from 1944 to 1990, it says, Hungary was oppressed by two dictatorships, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – even though the country in 1940 formally joined the Tripartite Pact, becoming an ally of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. “This is an attempt to absolve Hungarians from all their historical responsibilities,” Peter Csunderlik, a historian, tells BIRN. Csunderlik also says the concept of drawing clear parallels between communism and fascism as two totalitarian regimes is outdated. Perhaps the biggest weakness of the exhibition, however, is its staggering imbalance: while it seeks to put fascism and communism on an equal footing, it dedicates only one room to the victims of fascism in Hungary, while the rest of the exhibition deals with the atrocities committed under the Communist regime. “It portrays the Arrow Cross Party as if it had no antecedents in Hungary’s history, as if they had been a byproduct of German occupation,” Csunderlik says, referring to Hungary’s main fascist and Nazi party founded in the 1930s. The exhibition also fails to mention that Hungary was one of the first countries to pass anti-Jewish laws already in the 1920s. Despite establishing a parallel between fascism and communism, the museum has no room dedicated to the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 600,000 Hungarian Jews. Instead, it focuses on the fate of the 700,000 Hungarians deported to Soviet labour camps. It also blurs the distinction between the early 1950s and the late 1980s, suggesting that Hungary lived under the same brutal Communist regime for several decades. “It tries to divide the society into victims and perpetrators, but history is more complicated,” Csunderlik explains. In Hungary’s case, you could be both. Among the victims mourned in the House of Terror, there are several who were implicated in violent crimes previously. And among the perpetrators, there are many who had earlier been persecuted and tortured, perhaps by their own party comrades (for example, Imre Nagy, Hungary’s martyred prime minister executed after the 1956 uprising, was actually a communist leader). But those complexities are left without explanation. Director General of the House of Terror Museum, Maria Schmidt, delivers her address during Hungary’s Memorial Day for the Victims of Communist Dictatorships, at the museum in Budapest, Hungary, 25 February 2024. EPA/Tamas Kovacs What to do with it? For years, the museum’s director, Maria Schmidt, remained deaf to all criticism. She dismissed suggestions for corrections as coming from “leftists and liberal [historians]”. By using her political links to Orban, she built a complex and powerful network of think tanks and publications around the House of Terror, mostly financed with public money. For many Hungarians, her dismissal is regarded as a relief. “A person who compared the EU to the Fourth Reich and compared former German chancellor Angela Merkel to Hitler is simply not someone you can keep at the helm of a museum,” Csunderlik says, referring to Schmidt’s often outrageous political statements indulged by Orban’s government. Nevertheless, the fate of the House of Terror remains a dilemma for the new Tisza party government, which clearly wants to avoid sparking a new culture war that could provide ammunition for a weakened Fidesz while also keeping open a popular museum. When Culture Minister Zoltan Tarr first announced that the museum would be closed while a thorough review was conducted, Fidesz supporters swiftly organised a protest to defend their “symbol of national pride and sovereignty”. Maria Schmidt complained in a Facebook post that the government had not justified why the museum should be closed, and alleged, that her dismissal had to do with her “well-known” political views. The government relented and has even boosted attendance by scrapping the 4,000-forint (12-euro) entrance fee. Most historians think the new government should have shown more courage and simply closed the House of Terror until the exhibition is completely overhauled. And given the Fidesz party is already trying to frame the new government as part of a communist resurgence, fears that a revamp of the museum will become a new front in any culture war are overblown. The recently established National Asset Recovery Office, for example, which is responsible for investigating major corruption cases, has already been branded by Fidesz as the new AVH, or Communist secret police. “This is, of course, totally absurd,” the historian says. But until the government comes up with a final decision, the museum should continue to attract hundreds of visitors a day, who will likely leave duly impressed by the audiovisual content and largely unaware of any historical controversies and ambiguities. Gergo, a university student visiting with two friends, found it stunning. “It is important to confront our past, and I think it was really very well done,” he told BIRN as he left the museum. When asked about its alleged shortcomings or criticism, he said he found none. Even the imbalance between the portrayal of the Nazi and Communist regimes didn’t bother him much. “Well, the Nazis had a very short time, and the Communists stayed for much longer, so it’s logical that more rooms are dedicated to the latter,” he pointed out pragmatically.