Terror Haza

If the House of Terror did not enclose such a grim legacy - Hungary's more than four decades of terror under Nazi and then Soviet occupations - it would almost succumb to the absurdity in much of tourism. The museum alternates between the poignant (interviews with former prisoners, fascist and Communist propaganda, a preserved basement of torture and incarceration) and the cheesy (a video of actors changing clothes as they found new roles under changing regimes, a pig because collective welfare made it difficult to own your own). I don't know if cheesy is the right word, because I couldn't decide whether to admire the curators for mixing history with symbolism (as that would make them artistic) or dismiss them for trying too hard to please tourists (as that would make them cheesy, like the Buda labyrinth).

But if there's any place a tourist should see in Budapest, this is probably it. The Terror House grabs attention easily, for a few reasons: 1) its name, even if people first think it's a Halloween attraction; 2) its odd location on Andrassy Avenue, known for shopping and its UNESCO World Heritage recognition; and 3) its facade, an overhang with the word "TERROR" carved out like stencils so that the sun writes the letters on the sidewalk below.

Beyond the initial impressions, the museum delivers. This is probably due to its small size, but I've never seen a museum presented as such a complete package that is simultaneously concise and dramatic. The first image that greets visitors is the wall of victims: thousands of low relief, black-and-white head shots, about a square foot each, depicting the deceased and inscribed along a central wall that spans all three floors and the elevator. In the basement is the smaller portion of the wall, that of the victimizers. Their faces are smaller, but they have names and dates, many showing the victimizers to be alive still - hence the debate over what should be done with them and whether they should be allowed into public office.

Like the wall (and like a good meal), the exhibition rooms also rely on the power of presentation for impact. I've realized most of them are works of art in themselves, often for their symbolic significance. One room made manifest the dualism of oppression under fascists and Communists by screening footage on either side of the same wall in the center of the room, Hitler on one side, Stalin on the other. Working with the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, both at different times controlled Hungary, which seemed to trade one form of totalitarianism for another.

Another room shipped us off to Siberia, as the condemned Hungarians were once expelled. Horizontal wood paneling lined the walls, with windows simulated by TV screens showing the landscape roll by. A carpet map began in Hungary at the entrance and ended in the Soviet far east at the exit. Then there was (what I call) the Warhol room of '60s ads denoting the prosperity and consumption under socialism; the Catholic room, along the length of which ran a huge white cross "exposed" by floorboards pulled aside; and the black-and-white Gabor Peter room, white where the Communist police chief enjoyed a clean office, black where the Jewish Hungarian served a prison sentence under the system he once controlled.

All of this trimming disappears, however, once you walk through the rooms of the basement. For solitary confinement, you have the choice of a closet big enough to hold one person, a larger room just three feet high, or a wet cell. There's a Hungarian flag with the Soviet emblem cut out, a common image during the 1956 Revolution. A gallows is intact. Interviews run on a loop, men and women lamenting the senselessness of their subjugation. A young woman reads the names of the dead. And in the background plays a Hungarian version of Lili Marleen.