5 minute read
Hungary’s House of Horrors
by C Rene Padilla
A sobering visit to a Budapest museum prompted questions for Rene Padilla about the impact of ideology on our world and its people
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During the General Conference of the International Association for Mission Studies held in Balanton, Hungary, 16–23 August 2008, a group of participants, including my wife and me, paid a visit to the House of Terror Museum of Budapest. The purpose was to reflect on what happened in that country during the Nazi dictatorship of 1944–1945 and the following four decades of Soviet occupation.
The museum is located in the huge building that both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes used as headquarters for their terrorist police force and as a prison. It enables the visitors not only to get historical information but to listen to first-hand witnesses telling their personal experiences during the long and tragic years under the repressive governments. Among the sad experiences recalled are: the deportation, under the Nazi regime, of thousands of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, where most of them perished; deportation, once the Soviets took over, of thousands of Jews to the Soviet Union, and of thousands of Hungarians of German origin to Germany; the ‘internments’ that took place after the Soviet occupation, by which the new Hungarian authorities could place under police surveillance and eventually arrest any citizens suspected of opposing the regime; the concentration camps where thousands of prisoners were forced into hard labour; the ruthless communist campaign against the Hungarian peasants who resisted the collectivisation of the land.
One of the rooms of the museum is called ‘Anteroom of the Hungarian Political Police’. It recalls the Political Security Department (PRO), which was set up by the Soviet Union in January of 1945 for the purpose of tracking down war criminals and bringing them to trial. Later on it changed its name several times but not its methods, including torture, and it gained fame as a dreadful force because of the violence it displayed to repress the enemies of the communist establishment. It was entirely at the service of the Communist Party. For many years the director of the Political Police was Gabor Peter, whose hideous participation in state terrorism is recalled in another room.
No sensitive person can visit the House of Terror museum of Budapest and not feel overwhelmed by the degree of terror that, under the spell of a totalitarian ideology, a group of powerful people can impose on a whole nation. The recollection of the atrocities committed under the Nazi and the communist dictatorships does not only have historical value. It is also a forceful way to warn Hungarians and people from elsewhere against the dangers of totalitarianism. More than that, it is a good way to use memory to bring about healing and hope, especially when one takes into account that the culprits were in the end brought to court and condemned, and that the nightmare that the museum depicts now lies in the past.
A cry from Argentina
Coming from Argentina, however, my wife and I could not help thinking that our country of adoption, where we have lived for over forty years, also needs a house of terror museum. From 1976 to 1983 we also lived a nightmare under a dictatorship fully committed to an ideology – neither Nazism nor Communism, but neo-liberal Capitalism; neither backed by Germany nor by the Soviet Union, but (sad to say) by the United States of America!
Quite understandably, we in the West readily condemn the state terrorism experienced by people in Hungary and many other countries during the Nazi and the Communist eras. At the same time, however, our eyes seem to be blindfolded to prevent us from seeing what happened in Argentina and in several other Latin American countries under the military dictatorships of the cold-war years.
In the case of Argentina, it is estimated that 30,000 people regarded as ‘subversives’ disappeared. Surveillance, violation of human rights, torture – including rape, stealing of babies born of imprisoned mothers, and concentration camps became the order of the day. Some time ago, Francisco Scilingo, an Argentine navy captain, shocked people when he confessed that, obeying orders from his superiors, he had participated in the killing of ‘subversive’ prisoners by drugging them and throwing them, alive and naked, into the sea from a plane in flight.
By now, the horrors of Nazism and Communism are history, and so is the ‘Dirty War’ against the ‘communist subversion’ in the Latin American countries. Now that the ‘War on Terror’ is being waged all over the world, we urgently need a new house of terror museum to remind us that the ideology behind this new war also has an ominous track. As Hannah Arendt says, under terror, the majority of people give up, but a few do not, and humanly speaking nothing more is required and nothing more can be reasonably expected in order for this planet to continue to be inhabited by human beings.
Carlos Rene Padilla was CMS missiologist in residence Aug-Nov 2008. Born in Quito, Ecuador, at 15 he had a conversion experience, later studied at Wheaton and did a PhD in Manchester under FF Bruce. For many years he was on the staff of IFES, latterly in a publishing role and he is a prolific author. He has been very influential in the Lausanne Movement.
One of the rooms of the museum is called ‘Anteroom of the Hungarian Political Police’. It recalls the Political Security Department (PRO), which was set up by the Soviet Union in January of 1945 for the purpose of tracking down war criminals and bringing them to trial. Later on it changed its name several times but not its methods, including torture, and it gained fame as a dreadful force because of the violence it displayed to repress the enemies of the communist establishment. It was entirely at the service of the Communist Party. For many years the director of the Political Police was Gabor Peter, whose hideous participation in state terrorism is recalled in another room.
