Laura Sellers

House of Terror Museum, Budapest

In June 2015 my partner and I visited Budapest – one of the museums we went to was the “House of Terror”, a museum designed remember those who suffered and died under Nazi and then Soviet Occupation in Hungary.

The museum building was once the the exterior was renovated in 2002 when the site became a museum. The pictures of people who died along the wall makes a thoughtful memorial, but the canopy of letters round the top ruin the effect making the place seen touristy (which it arguably is) but also mock-sinister rather than a genuine place of historic terror.

This particular visit hammered home to me how much a museum needs objects – that might seem like a weird thing to say and perhaps seems like an obvious truth.The museum had very few artefacts and information was primarily conveyed by a long and fairly dull audio-guide and subtitled films. The content of the films and indeed the audio-guide were interesting but the display method was same-y and lengthy so impact was lost. A slight mind numbing started to happen as we went round. Not the desired effect I’m sure! In the few places there were clever displays, such as one room which immersed you into a transportation carriage, not by being a replica carriage but by including sound, textures, shadows and videos which replaced the windows. In other places walls and corridors were used to hint at claustrophobia and fear which was added to by the creation of bottlenecks when people stopped to watch a video or read some text.

In the basement  of the building were recreation torture cells, these were oddly sanitised, reconstructed concrete spaces, apart from some sinister music in the lift down the full impact and complex and horrifying history of what happened in that place was lost. As another visitor said this was not aided by the fact we were over two hours into the lecture series which is given by audio-guide almost entirely by one, not especially charismatic man. Somehow, despite the focus being on people, as it should be, I could see (and hear) that many visitors were finding themselves distanced rather than empathetic.

My boyfriend in particular was completely and utterly bored, and due to the excessive amount of the samey audio-guide and lack of “stuff” I felt he came away from the museum with the wrong impression – he no longer felt sympathy for the people who suffered instead he felt that the museum was full of “propaganda” drearily repeating the same point over and over again, which was obviously not the point of a memorial museum. Others have criticised the museum for being over political and presenting Hungary as a victim and not acknowledging it’s own role in 20th century atrocities, maybe including the complexity of history might have helped.

Image from a View on Cities. http://www.aviewoncities.com/gallery/showpicture.htm?key=kvehu1841