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On Thursday the Director of the Institute for the Research of Communism told Hungarian press agency MTI that the opening of the House of Terror Museum was a historic milestone. He said that this is because, just over a decade after the fall of communism, Hungary was the first country to create a museum and memorial site that juxtaposed the two totalitarian dictatorships “imposed on us” by the powers which occupied Hungary between 1944 and 1989.

Mr. Fekete was speaking on the telephone after giving a speech on the challenges facing conservatism today at a joint summer university in Zagreb organised by the New Direction Foundation and the Croatian Centre for the Renewal of Culture.

He recalled that from 15 October 1944 to 1956 the building at 60 Andrássy Avenue Budapest was an important site for two totalitarian dictatorships: that of the Arrow Cross and that of the Communists. He said that the building has become intertwined with the concept of terror in Hungary because of the shocking historical experiences associated with it, and also because people were compelled to remain silent about them. Mr. Fekete quoted Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s speech at the opening of the museum on 24 February 2002, in which he said that “There is enormous power in this building”, and also that “this building exists to protect the nation from its own shadow”.

The Director recalled that it took courage to open the museum, because in Western Europe more than twenty years ago the atrocities of National Socialism were considered to be unique and incomparable. “But Professor of History Maria Schmidt, founder of the House of Terror Museum, ignored this prohibition, because she was convinced that Nazi and communist crimes had shared roots”, Mr. Fekete said.

He noted that at the time this was a heretical idea, especially in a country where, after the fall of communism, post-communists had seized power and had continued to fight rearguard battles for exclusive ownership of the past. The Director of the Institute for the Research of Communism pointed out that “From the outset, this elite feared the very existence of the House of Terror Museum, because it could lead to the disintegration of the Left’s remaining myth [and] the undermining of its fragile legitimacy”. 

He cited the example of the more than 150,000 people who gathered at the Museum’s opening in 2002, but “the commercial television channels and the following morning’s newspapers” presented a very different picture: “they spoke about political provocation, hatred and fear-mongering”, and later the attacks on the Museum only intensified. Mr. Fekete said that in his presentation in Zagreb he had described these political attacks in detail, and how the House of Terror Museum – which has welcomed more than seven million visitors – has stood the test of time.

The Director observed that one year after the opening, at a commemoration ceremony in front of the museum on the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communism, Viktor Orbán said that 60 Andrássy Avenue is “the only honest piece of confrontation with our past”, which is both “an abiding source of pain” and “an abiding symbol of conscience”. Mr. Fekete also pointed out that the French historian Stephane Courtois, editor and one of the authors of “The Black Book of Communism”, has said that the significance of the House of Terror is that it is “the museum that declares the accusations”.

He said that

"the House of Terror Museum was the first step in a process by which the post-communists lost what they thought was their unlimited monopoly over the interpretation of the past, the present and – ultimately – the future."

The Director also reported that the summer university, which ran from Tuesday to Friday, also included talks by José Antonio Kast, the conservative presidential candidate in Chile’s 2021 presidential election, former Croatian foreign minister Miro Kovač, and former prime minister of Slovenia Janez Janša.

Source: MTI