House of Terror

One must-see site in Budapest is the House of Terror, once the location of the Nazi secret police and then the Communist secret police.

It is located at Andrássy út 60, the street that is home to such elegance and sophistication nearby. It's impossible to miss, with those huge black borders, just north of the Oktagon and a stop for the #4/6 trams and the gold-line subway.

All along the building outside are small photos of the heroes of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Communists, with a plaque "They died for you" in Hungarian and English and several bouquets and wreaths.

The extremely heavy doors are difficult to pull open and the ominous mood of this building with the chilling history strikes you immediately. Admission is 1000 HUF (about $5.00), but it's free if you have an "International Teacher Identity Card" (ITIC), which I had obtained at the recommendation of the Fulbright Commission.

Pictures were not allowed inside. The first thing you see is an old Soviet tank in the middle of the first floor, floating in a smelly oily substance, surrounded by several floors of offices looking down on this center area. Staff send you to the top floor by elevator, where high-tech displays show the encroachment of the Nazis on a map of Europe and historic film footage showing first the occupation of the Nazis and then the Communists. As you work your way down through the levels of the building, you are led through displays of artifacts from the Jews sent to their deaths by the Nazis, the uniforms of the Hungarian Nazis and then the Communists, and more historic footage.

You walk through rooms for interrogation and torture, with tools of the trade on display. Another room shows the listening devices used to spy on citizens. Offices of the staff and the head of the secret service for both regimes are on view with their original furniture. Each room has a hand-out explaining the exhibit in both Hungarian and English.

For the final stage of the tour, you enter a glass elevator for the descent into the basement cells. But the elevator goes at a snail's pace and a film of a survivor on a flat-screen TV describes the process of execution and torture used in the building (with English subtitles). The cells in the smelly, dark basement are crude, small, and terrifying. The room where people were hung by kicking out a stool under the noose is on view there too.

As you head for the exit, you are greeted by film in color from June 1991 showing the Soviet troops happily packing up their equipment on trains for their peaceful departure from Hungary. But that's not the final stop for the exhibit. One more room has a rogue's gallery of what they call the "victimizers," with the photos, names, and dates of birth and (sometimes) death of the people who carried out their crimes against humanity in this building -- some of whom seem to still be living.

This was the most emotionally draining exhibit I have seen in a long time. I understood that it is surrounded by political controversy, with right-wing politicians accused of short-changing the displays on the Nazis. A new Holocaust Museum opened a few years ago in Budapest, reportedly in response to this criticism.

I could not help but wonder what future generations will think of waterboarding, wiretapping U.S. citizens without warrants, and the belittling of the Geneva Conventions -- and whose pictures might be hanging on a future rogue's gallery of Victimizers.

The cafeteria favored by the secret police who worked here is just down the street at Andrássy út 70, now a chic espresso bar called Lukács Cukrászda. A cafe has operated there since 1912 and the Baroque decor is beautiful. But I was relieved when they said they do not accept credit cards, as it gave me a good excuse to leave the land of torturers and find a more welcoming environment.

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