The Memory of Communist Crimes: The “House of Terror” and the Central Cemetery

The 20th century was an age of totalitarianisms, both of which cited the danger emanating from the other to legitimise its own actions. The ravages, mass murders, deportations were usually justified as preventive measures. In this respect there are reciprocal and close causal connections between the crimes of the communists and those of the national-socialists. A memorial culture which only looks at the crimes of one of these totalitarian systems runs the risk of being harnessed to the service of the other totalitarian system and consequently of abetting its crimes or of playing down those crimes. The two memorial sites discussed in my essay are illustrative examples of this.

The “House of Terror”

The house at Andrássy Street 60 was virtually predistined to become a museum because, until 1945, it was the headquarters of the Hungarian national-socialists, after which it was occupied by the communist political police until 1989. The center-right nationalist government of Viktor Orbán spared no costs, and in 2002 it had created the most imposing museum in Hungary of the last 15 years. The courtyard of the museum houses photo installations consisting of a “wall of perpetrators” and a “wall of victims”. Well appointed rooms have been created over three floors, which focus on selected aspects of two dictatorships: that of the Arrow Cross Party and that of the Communists.

From the start, socialist and liberal politicians criticised the idea of a setting up a museum in this house. Foreign Minister László Kovács suggested creating a “House of Remembrance and Reconciliation” at another site instead of a “House of Terror”. But reconciliation demands a suitable acknowledgement of guilt. This has practically not happened on the part of the perpetrators.

The first room of the exhibition focuses on the “double occupation”. While a conscious decision was taken not to depict the road to the Holocaust in the exhibition – strangely enough this was the only topic about which there was a general consensus between all political parties, who agreed to consign this topic to a separate museum set in a more remote location – the abridged and truncated depiction of history has resulted in outrageous compromises. Visitors are led to believe that only a few individuals can be held responsible for the attacks on Jews, although in reality the reverse was the case. In view of the incriminating fact that several hundreds of thousands of Hungarian profited from the theft of Jewish property and that the ruling parties prior to 1944 barely differed from the Arrow Cross Party in their anti-Semitism, such information is completely misleading. While the policies of Miklós Horthy acted as a brake on the most radical Hungarian anti-Semites, his merits cannot be used to cover up the responsibility for the persecution of Jews which occurred prior to 1944.

The most obvious failure of symbolic representation occurs in the room which shows a change of clothes. Two figures, each with their back to the other, wearing the uniform respectively of the Arrow Cross Party and of the communist political police, are positioned on a revolving podium. In addition, a screen shows shadowy figures changing their clothes. As in 1945 not a single member of the Arrow Cross Party put on the uniform of the political police, this representation can only be described as a falsification of history. If the organizers of the exhibition had wanted to show the similarities between the two totalitarian parties, then they would have had to highlight the continuities among the supporters of both parties.

The curators’ concept of revealing continuities by using members of the political police as examples is also indicative of a key issue of this exhibition: all references to a national responsibility for the crimes have been avoided. All that visitors can read about the members of the political police is the comment: “an organisation of radical left-wing elements, criminals and former hangman’s assistants of the Arrow Cross Party”. In fact, there was not a single “hangman’s assistant of the Arrow Cross Party” among the leaders of the political police, that is, among the persons whose portraits are displayed in the exhibition, nor were there any common criminals. Many, indeed, were staunch communists. For a large majority revenge may have motivated and influenced their decision to join the police because, to a large extent, the first members of the political police were Jews who had suffered first-hand experience of oppression under the government of Miklós Horthy (1 March 1920–16 October 1944) as conscripted members of the Jewish Labour Service (a special unit for forced labour in the Hungarian army), that is, as victims. Only a few of them had returned from exile. The exhibition primarily shows compromising material about communists. The museum “House of Terror” has given virtually no space to antifascism.

In the room on anti-communist resistance, visitors can read the following text: “Several thousands of people enlisted in various armed resistance organisations (...) The names of many of them are unknown. Communist lies are still being told about others, although they are true heroes”. It is difficult to interpret such sentences in any other sense than by taking them to mean that all anti-communists movements, including extreme right-wing and racist movements, were heroic and should be glorified, which means that the motives behind such anti-communist movements should not be scrutinised and differentiated.

This undifferentiated presentation of individual life stories results in a confusion between perpetrators and victims. This is particularly evident in the reconstructed torture cellar. There is no reference next to any of the portraits in the cells informing visitors about what exactly the persons represented there stood accused of and why they had become victims of the Terror. Victims where a discussion of their biography as perpetrators would have been necessary were either left out or belonged exclusively to the anti-communist camp. This concept is an indication of the current political considerations of the organizers of the exhibition who, while they did dare to present controversial figures from the anti-communist camp as victims, failed to apply the same standards to communists.

The aim of the Hungarian politics of memory to create meaning is unmistakeable when one examines the speeches and comments made at the museum’s inauguration. In his opening speech in February 2002 Minister President Viktor Orbán stated that dictatorships in Hungary had always only come to power with outside help. However, this does not apply in the case of the Soviet Republic (19 March – 2 August 1919). And during the government of Döme Sztójay (22 March–29 September 1944) the deportations of Jews were carried out for the most part by Hungarian officials.

The Central Cemetery

The victims of all important political trials held between 1945 and 1962 are buried in the Central Cemetery in two large plots. In plot 298 lie the remains of people executed between 1945 and 1956 for alleged or actual “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”, but also the remains of people who were victims of show trials. Arrow Cross members, war criminals, democrats, and socialists all lie here side by side. In the adjacent plot 301 the victims of show trials held prior to 1956 as well as participants in the revolution of 1956 are buried.

After the fall of communism the grounds became a site of memory where the different interpretations of the past collided. Already in 1989 the fringe artists collective Inconnu erected numerous so-called Kopjafa (wooden beams in the style of the burial steles of the Magyars prior to their Christianisation) on plot 298. In the same year and as a reaction against the modernity of the memorial site, a stylised entrance resembling a Magyar farmhouse was erected, bearing the inscription: “Wanderer, you who come here can only enter this gate if you have a Hungarian soul.” Behind it a marble tablet was put up with the following inscription: “They died a martyr’s death for the fatherland”. Sentences such as these exemplify a stance whereby those buried there are considered victims of a special persecution directed against Magyars. The fact that the perpetrators (judges, policemen, officers, politicians, etc.) without exception considered themselves as Magyars is thus indirectly denied by the initiators of these funerary inscriptions.

The fact that both innocent victims and mass murders rest together in plot 298 and even that some of these mass murderers were not executed for their crimes but on trumped up charges has not been a topic of discussion for more than 15 years. A “cleansing” of the plot with the removal of problematic persons is unlikely and would be difficult to enforce because the families would consider this a desecration of the grave. When we look at many of the victims we find a mixture of actual and contrived guilt. Were there to be a consistent separation, only a few persons would remain in the plot. This situation is made even more complicated by the fact that one group is totally missing from the plot: the communists who were killed during the show trials. They were either not buried here or they were exhumed already in 1956 and ceremoniously reburied. And so, for the right-wing camp there is no reason to criticise or review those buried there. The possibility of replacing the commemorative plaques with new texts, thereby doing justice to the complexity of both sites of memory, is clearly a task which the political decision-makers have continued to avoid up to the present day.

translated from German by Helen Schoop

Krisztián Ungváry (born 1969) – Hungarian historian specializing in political and military history of 20th century. His most popular works are studies on sieges laid to Budapest during World War II. One of the founders of the Hungarian Association of Boy Scouts.