The House of Terror

You can’t miss the House of Terror if you’re visiting Budapest. With a name like that, you kind of expect a haunted house or something but what you find is every bit as shocking. You see, the House of Terror is a museum dedicated to the two eras of totalitarianism in 20th century Hungary: Nazism and Communism.

The museum is located on one of the city’s most important streets and was once the headquarters of the Gestapo. When you first arrive at the museum, you immediately notice the symbol iron curtain and the jarring word “TERROR.”

Once inside, the museum is divided into thematic rooms designed to really immerse you in the era: there are old dining rooms with guests in military uniforms, rooms filled with propaganda posters depicting Communism and Nazism as the solutions to the country’s woes, rooms with telephones blaring the fiery speeches of the ruling parties, and still others highlighting the various methods of torture utilized by the two regimes.

This museum gives a false representation of history. It diminishes the role of the Hungarian government and people of Hungary in the genocide of almost half a million Jews during the holocaust. It fails to even mention that Hungary was the first country outside Germany to side with the Nazis and welcomed them into the country in 1944 with flowers. Deeply upsetting and concerning that this propaganda-fuelled revisionist history is being peddled to unsuspecting tourists looking to learn about genuine Hungarian history.