House of Terror

Terror Háza

The state memorial »House of Terror«, located on Budapest's Andrássy út boulevard - in a building that first housed the headquarters of the National Socialist Arrow Cross Party and later the Stalinist secret service - commemorates the victims of both these dictatorships.

History

On March 19, 1944, the German Wehrmacht occupied its ally Hungary. In the following months, the SS, assisted by Hungarian authorities, deported almost all of the Jews in Hungary – except the Jews of Budapest. Open terror gripped the country particularly after October 1944, when the National Socialist Arrow Cross Party came to power with the support of the German authorities. Members of the Arrow Cross Party incarcerated many political opponents in their headquarters in Andrássy út 60, in the »House of Loyalty«, locking them in the basement and subjecting them to severe abuse.
At the beginning of 1945, the Red Army occupied Hungary. The Soviets established a transitional government consisting of several parties, with the communists taking hold of the Ministry of the Interior. Over time they set up an armed secret service, which played a key role in the fight against and the suppression of other parties in the post-war years. The service set up headquarters in the former house of the Arrow Cross Party and extended the existing basement prison facilities. The communists succeeded in establishing a Stalinist regime by 1948/49. Until the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the secret service spread fear among the population, and no-one was safe from possible imprisonment. Tens of thousands were incarcerated, forcibly resettled or deported to forced labour camps. Political opponents, the clergy, »bourgeois« people and aristocrats as well as peasants abusively called »Kulaks« were among the victims. Many communists, who had fallen out of grace with the authorities, met a similar fate: they were incarcerated and put on show trials. The secret service changed its name several times, the best-known abbreviations were AVO (»Államvédelmi Osztály«, State Security Department) and AVH (»Államvédelmi Hivatal«, State Security Office). The AVH was dismantled in the course of the 1956 revolution, yet many of its staff took part in suppressing the uprising and in reprisal measures.

Budapest, undated, Reconstructed interrogation room in the cellar, Terror Háza

Victims

The House of Terror memorial site is dedicated to the victims of totalitarian regimes in Hungary. The exhibition deals with the period between the German invasion in March 1944 and 1961, when the suppression following the 1956 revolution subsided and the communist leadership launched a phase of consolidation. No executions were carried out in the building itself, yet many of the prisoners died. The exact number is not known.

Following defeat in the First World War and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungary had to surrender two thirds of its territory and sixty percent of its population to its neighbours in 1920. The trauma caused by these losses led Hungary, under the leadership of Miklós Horthy (1868–1957), to gradually ally itself with Nazi Germany from 1937 onwards. Between 1938 and 1941 Hungary managed to almost double its territory in several stages of border revisions. Faced with the advance of the Red Army the country began to distanc itself from Nazi Germany and was therefore occupied by the Wehrmacht in March 1944. Miklós Horthy retained his position as head of state. Almost immediately after the invasion and with the assistance of Hungarian authorities, the SS began to deport Jews to the Auschwitz extermination camp, something that Hungary had refused to do up to then, despite having introduced anti-Jewish legislation. Of the 825,000 Jews from »Greater Hungary« the number murdered in Auschwitz stands at way over half a million. Up to 300,000 of these Jews came from the regions of what is today’s Hungary. In addition, around 140,000 soldiers along with some 170,000 non-Jewish civilians perished during the Second World War. After 1945 Hungary was in the Soviet sphere of influence. Up to 1989, official commemorations in Hungary did not remember the war but rather its end as the »liberation from fascism«. However, for the majority of the population 1945 was the start of a long period of repression. For many Hungarians, memory of the national uprising in 1956 that was crushed by the Soviets overshadows that of the Second World War. Following the uprising the war was viewed as the inglorious prelude to the suffering under communist rule. At the same time, there were many state monuments celebrating »Hungarian-Soviet friendship«. During the communist period there was no official remembrance of those who had died during the war on the front, at home and during the genocide, nor were there any Holocaust memorial sites outside of Jewish institutions. The only related site was the Jewish Museum in Budapest, founded in 1932 and reopened in 1947. In 1985 the Jewish community in Budapest opened a »Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park« alongside the large synagogue located on the edge of the former ghetto. A state monument to Raoul Wallenberg (*1912–?) was inaugurated in 1987 in connection with a visit by the communist head of state János Kádár (1912–1989) to Sweden. Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved thousands of Budapest Jews. He was deported by the Soviet occupation force in 1945 and since then has been missing, presumed dead. This monument marked a turnaround in the decades of silence regarding the Holocaust. Only since the new millennium have numerous Holocaust memorials and memorial sites emerged in Hungary. These include the »Shoes on the Danube Promenade« in Budapest, inaugurated on 16 April 2005, the date of the Hungarian Holocaust Remembrance Day introduced in 2000. This memorial remembers the murder of up to 20,000 Jews from the Budapest ghetto in January 1945 by the »Arrow Cross«, a right-wing extremist party that had assumed power in Hungary on 15 October 1944. A national Holocaust Museum was opened in the capital in 2004. However, there are still very few memorials to other victims. Symptomatic of the way in which post-communist Hungary has dealt with its 20th century past is the fiercely debated »House of Terror«, opened in the centre of Budapest in 2002, which deals with the history of »both totalitarian dictatorships«. The involvement of Hungarians in the deportation of their fellow Jewish citizens often recedes into the background.

Remembrance

After 1956, the house was used as an office building and all traces of the basement prison were removed. Nevertheless, to the public »Andrássy út 60« was a symbol of the crimes committed by the two dictatorships. From the 1960s on, the communist authorities tried to distance themselves from the crimes committed before 1956, yet the history was never dealt with in depth, nor were any of the perpetrators prosecuted. Only after the political transformation of 1989/90 could themes such as the Recsk forced labour camp, which existed between 1950 and 1953, or the brutal persecution of revolutionaries after 1956, openly be discussed. The extent of human rights' abuse was yet unknown to the public.
At the turn of the millennium, when the Hungarian government decided on establishing a national Holocaust memorial centre, it also initiated setting up a memorial site dedicated to the victims of both totalitarian dictatorships. A state foundation purchased the highly symbolic building at Andrássy út and remodelled it to a memorial. The underlying idea of the memorial is that totalitarianism was at the core of all evil in the history of the 20th century, regardless of the ideological colouring of the particular system. Hungary is portrayed as a country that lost its sovereignty after March 1944 and became a pawn in the hands of global powers. Parallels are drawn between the two dictatorships; the political symbols and uniforms are shown to be interchangeable. Biographies of perpetrators who served both regimes are presented. The exhibition's narrative is not chronological, instead it relies on dramatic effects and emotions: for example, music is used in the exhibition and the prison was reconstructed in the cellar.

Budapest, 2008, Portraits and names of people who were executed after the suppression of the 1956 revolution, Adriana Lukas

Budapest, 2005, House of Terror, public domain

Possibilities

Permanent exhibition, guided tours, audioguides

Open

Tuesday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Contact

http://www.terrorhaza.hu

muzeum@terrorhaza.hu

+36 (0)1 374 26 00

Andrássy út 60
H-1062 Budapest

Budapest, undated, Soviet T-54 tank in front of a wall of victims' portraits, Terror Háza

Budapest, 2005, Façade of the memorial, Stiftung Denkmal

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