House of Terror



The House of Terror (Terror Háza Múzeum) is a museum located at Andrássy Avenue 60 in Budapest, Hungary. It contains exhibits related to the fascist and communist regimes in 20th-century Hungary and is also a memorial to the victims of these regimes, including those detained, interrogated, tortured, or killed in the building.

The museum opened on 24 February 2002, and its director general has been Mária Schmidt.

The House of Terror is a member organization of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. Visitors including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Francis Fukuyama, and Hayden White have praised the institution.

Building
The building was previously used by the Arrow Cross Party and ÁVH.

The museum was set up under the government of Viktor Orbán. In December 2000, the Public Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Society purchased it with the aim of establishing a museum in order to commemorate the fascist and communist periods of Hungarian history.

During the year-long construction period, the building was fully renovated inside and out. The internal design, the final look of the museum's exhibition hall, and the external facade are all the work of architect Attila F. Kovács. The reconstruction plans for the museum were designed by architects János Sándor and Kálmán Újszászy. The reconstruction turned the exterior of the building into somewhat of a monument: the black exterior structure (consisting of the decorative entablature, the blade walls, and the granite footpath) provides a frame for the museum, making it stand out in sharp contrast to the other buildings on Andrássy Avenue. Inside the building, the museum has a T-54 tank on display.

Permanent exhibition
The museum's permanent exhibition contains material related to the nation's relationships to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It also contains exhibits related to Hungarian organisations such as the fascist Arrow Cross Party and the communist ÁVH (similar to the Soviet KGB). Part of the exhibition takes visitors to the basement, where examples of cells used by the ÁVH to torture prisoners can be seen.

Much of the information and the exhibits are in Hungarian, although each room has an extensive information sheet in both English and Hungarian. Audio guides in English, German, Spanish, Russian, and Italian are also available.

The background music to the exhibition was composed by former Bonanza Banzai frontman and producer Ákos Kovács. The score includes the work of a string orchestra, special stereophonic mixes, and sound effects.



Controversy


Some historians, journalists, and political scientists such as Magdalena Marsovszky or Ilse Huber have argued that the museum excessively portrays Hungary as the victim of foreign occupiers and does not sufficiently recognise the contribution that Hungarians themselves made to the regimes in question. Criticism has also been raised that far more space is given to the terror of the communist regime than the fascist one. One answer to these criticisms was that while the German occupation and fascist regime of Ferenc Szálasi lasted less than a year, the Hungarian Communist period lasted forty years. The museologists have also reminded critics that the Hungarian Holocaust has its own museum.