BudaPEST: Synagogue, the House of Terror

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So, I am in Budapest after getting a lovely 'bus' (car) from Cluj. I am staying in Pest (the east of side of the river) in a huge hostel in district VIII.

This morning I went along to the Grand Synagogue on Dohany Street. The synagogue is one of the largest in the world, and quite different in style to other synagogues. It looks like a catholic cathedral. Which wasn't an accident. The synagogue was built by the Neolog Jews who were trying to show how integrated they were in Hungarian society. Hungary has always been (comparative to other European states) more accepting of Jewish people.

Dohany Street Synagogue was designed by a (non-Jewish) Viennese architect and was built in the Moorish Revival style (based on buildings like Alhambra in Spain), and from the outside this is fairly clear. On the inside, however, it is like walking into a fairly bizarre cathedral. There are three naves, two pulpits and even an organ (which was surprising as synagogues don't often have organs and it is against Religious laws to play them on the Sabbath).

Dohany is more than a single synagogue. There is a whole complex, including a museum, a second temple (used in winter) a cemetery (very unusual), and a memorial park. The second temple, Heroes Temple, was built as a memorial to the Hungarian Jews who died fighting in the WWI. It is much smaller than the main synagogue, and is only opened when there is a service going on. It is used in winter as there is no heating in the main synagogue (something to do with the sheet gold decorations). Synagogues don't usually have cemeteries next to them, but this one was dug when, after being liberated by the Red Army, those that hadn't survived the ghetto needed a place to be buried. A sculpture of a weeping willow with names of the deceased inscribed on them is located in the courtyard of the Raoul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews by giving them letters and protective passports. He disappeared after the war when he was questioned by the Soviets.

In a strange twist of fate, the synagogue survived the war largely in tact as the Nazis used it as a radio tower.

After the synagogue, I made my way over to House of Terror, a museum dedicated to the two oppressions of Hungary; Nazi and Soviet. The museum was opened in 2002, on 60 Andrassy Street. The building was once the 'House of Loyalty', the headquarters of the Arrow Cross Party (Hungarian Nazis) and later it was taken over by the Communist terror organisations AVO and AVH (State Security Office and the State Security Aurthority).

Andrassy Boulevard is a beautiful street lined with trees and beautiful buildings. It's very easy to get the underground here, the stop is only a block away (Vörösmarty Utca) and there are buses and trams that pass it too.

After buying my ticket I went into the covered courtyard. A huge soviet tank is pointed at the door and is surrounded by the pictures of the victims. The man who checks my ticket tells me to go up to the 2nd floor, then go down to the first floor, then to the basement and finally come back up to the ground floor.

I come out of the lift on the second floor and am greeted by grungy metal music. On the wall is a projection of the state of Hungary and how, after the Treaty of Versailles, it's territory and population were significantly reduced. Down the centre of the room is a wall. On one side there are videos of the facist occupation, people cheering, crying, shouting 'heil'. On the other side there are videos of the communist occupation. The way the room is set out reminded me of the 'two sides of the same coin' idiom, and this is undoubtedly the intention.

I walk through a passageway to a dining room. The dinner table is laid and a mannequin wearing an Arrow Cross uniform is standing at the head. The Arrow Cross Party became the second strongest party of Hungary in 1939 and became the leaders of Hungary for less than 6 months from 1944-45. After the war many were tried as war criminals, having sent many Hungarians (many of them were Jews) to Auschwitz, and murdered thousands of others on their own land.

This room was followed by a long room the shape of the inside of a cattle car. Along the walls talking head testimonies are played. I stood there for a long time listening to the stories, but they never repeated. I think there may be enough footage to last a very long time. In the middle of this room there are round tables with a few possessions and letters from those taken away. My Hungarian is limited to the words 'hello' 'yes', and 'thank you', I don't know what they said, but as I was listening to the testimonies I saw a few people reading them all the way through.

The next room had two revolving mannequins, one wearing an Arrowcross uniform, the other a Soviet one. an old video showed people taking it in turns to walk up to a coat stand and basket full of clothes and change their allegiance.

The Iron Curtain falls. Hungary was turned into a one-party country (after an election that voted for a democratic party). Many social organisations and societies were banned. There is a room filled with what looks like voting booths. Intimidation and electoral fraud managed to secure only 22%!o(MISSING)f the vote for the communist party after thousands of people were denied their right to vote and others cast votes on fake blue ballots. After this, democracy was suspended for 40 years, opposition was swiftly dealt with and Sovietism began to wield it's big red hammer.

Going down a floor, I entered the 'Resettlement and Deportation' room. In the centre a large limo-like car with a lavish interior is hidden by a muslin curtain and is revealed by a bright light. Huge 'resettlement' programs (the word 'deportation' being an officially prohibited word) led to hundreds of thousands of people being swapped across borders.

There were rooms recreated to look like the offices of the times. There was a courtroom filled with documents and pews to watch the Soviet propaganda film of Imre Nagy's show trial. Nagy ('Nodge' - like hedge, but a softer 'd'... I think) was executed for treason and sentenced to death. He tried to withdraw from the warsaw pact and appealed for help from the UN, US, and UK. Unfortunately for Nagy, the Suez Canal crisis took precedence, the revolution failed and he was executed. The show trial is played along with the propaganda.

The next room has a torn up floor with a cross made of light beaming through. Religion was the enemy to both the Nazis and the Communists. In this room religious items from various Christian denominations and Judaism can be found. A group of us watched a video about Cardinal Mindszenty while we waited for a lift to take us down to the basement.

The lift took a few minutes to descend the two storeys, which gave a horrible sinking feeling. An interview with the man who cleaned the execution areas was screened. He described the hangings, the place, the people, in a tone that, to me, sounded matter-of-fact. That's just what happened.

I went through the reconstructed cells which had pictures of their walls of the inmates who had been there, the room with revolutionary items, the room of 'retaliation' complete with the gallows, and a room filled with white lights called the 'hall of tears'.

The last part of the museum left me feeling uneasy. There are a few controversies surrounding the museum, mostly to do with how Hungary is portrayed as a victim and doesn't recognise the number of Hungarians who contributed to the regimes and that more space is given to the Communist regime than the fascist. My internal controversy comes from that last room; the 'Perpetrators Gallery'. A wall of photographs, names and dates of those that took part in the controversy. Some of the names only have one date; they are still alive. Here, there is no forgiveness and no forgetting.





http://www.terrorhaza.hu/en//first_page.html - House of Terror website (English)

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Photos

Dohany_Street_Synagogue_Pest_Hungary
Stolen from Wikipedia

House of Terror
also stolen from wikipedia