LLWorldTour

Though a generation has come of age since the Iron Curtain parted in 1989 in Hungary, reminders of the regime are relatively easy to find. It wasn’t so long ago that Budapest was ruled with an iron fist by the Soviets. I wanted to learn more about this chapter in their recent past so I took a “Soviet” tour of the city. It began in something called Szobor (Statue) Park on the edges of the city. This purposely barren-looking bleak park was created as a ‘final resting place’ for the huge ominous communist-era statues that had dotted the city-scape from the end of WWII to the early 1990s. Some of the statues had been mostly destroyed by the people during the final days of communism—and as if meant to be …all that’s left of Lenin are a pair of huge boots. I guess they were made for walking…so to speak.

But the most moving and somewhat disturbing display had to be one of the most powerful museums I have ever been to, the House of Terror. From the moment you enter its imposing entry hall and hear the eerie music, you know you are in for something different. Once headquarters of the Hungarian Nazi Party and immediately following it the Communist State Security Police, it’s now a modern, stylish, high-tech museum that uses amazingly creative, well thought out displays (including an eerie Nazi board room, a re-created “interrogation” room complete with old ‘reel to reel’ recording machines, a room on life in the Gulag, a maze of rubber ‘pork fat bricks’ reminding old timers of the harsh conditions of the 1950s, a memorial room called the “Hall of Tears” with hundreds of backlit victims’ names on the walls and dozens of tiny lights on stakes in a ‘field’ across the floor), and videotaped interviews with victims to illustrate the grim decades of Nazi and Communist repression.

After allying themselves with Hitler to save their own skins, Hungary was overtaken by the Nazi-affiliated Arrow Cross Party in the waning days of World War II. Their ideology was somewhat similar to Nazism - extreme nationalism, the promotion of agriculture, anti-capitalism, anti-Communism, and militant anti-Semitism. Arrow Cross members did their best to exterminate Budapest’s Jews, killing them one-by-one in the streets, and were known to tie several victims together, shoot one of them, and throw him into the freezing Danube — dragging the others in as well. They executed hundreds in the basement of the building I was in. During its short rule, 80,000 Jews, including many women, children and elderly were deported from Hungary to their deaths. After the war, Arrow Cross leaders were tried as war criminals by Hungarian courts.

When the communists moved into Hungary, they took over the same building as headquarters of their secret police (the ÁVO, later renamed ÁVH). To keep dissension to a minimum, the secret police terrorized, tried, deported, or executed anyone suspected of being an enemy of the state. Communism turned nearly everyone against each other and anyone who didn’t ‘applaud loud enough’ came under suspicion. Political prisoners were imprisoned in ÁVH-run concentration camps many of which were crude and cruel. Private property was abolished. Industry, education, financial and commercial services as well as culture were nationalized. Shortages became a common part of the bankrupt economy and shelves in the stores were consistently empty. The iron curtain descended, borders were closed. In some labor camps the unspoken goal was the eventual death of inmates due to overwork and maltreatment. In a number of cases, torture was an essential part of camp life and discipline.

The final section of the museum began with a video of a former guard explaining the execution process which plays while you descend in a purposely excruciatingly slow elevator into the prison basement where there are re-created eerie cramped prison cells and torture rooms.

The museum has had its share of criticism, mostly from activists that have argued that the museum portrays Hungary too much as the victim of foreign occupiers and does not recognize enough the contribution that Hungarians themselves made to the regimes in question. Critics have also criticized the fact that far more space is given to the terror of the communist regime than the fascist one. Answers to these critics generally revolve around the fact that, while the fascist Nazi regime lasted only few months, the Hungarian Communist regime lasted for forty years.

After a restless, noisy ride in an overnight train in which I shared a car with a rather large, snoring Hungarian woman, I arrived un-refreshed in Budapest. This city of nearly 2 million straddles Europe’s mighty Danube River with nine stately bridges connecting the two sides. It originally was three separate cities: Obuda, Buda, and Pest. Over the years, it has belonged to many—Romans, Turks, Hapsburg-Austrians, Soviets—and it was not until 1991, when the last Soviet troops left the country, that Hungary began to rebuild it’s full market economy and became the thriving modern city that it is today. Summer was in full swing here complete with outdoor festivals, live music, and even fireworks rocketing off from several bridges in a wonderful spectacle celebrating their first King during the national holiday of St. Stephen’s Day.

Two things I’d noticed in Eastern Europe and Budapest in particular that I hadn’t seen for awhile:

1. Women are wearing shorts (scandalously above the knee!), in many cases ‘short shorts.’ It is definitely a less conservative, more free atmosphere than most countries to the east.

2. Many people are on two wheels around the city—not just for transport, like all over Asia, but for exercise and leisure. Hungary now has more than 2500 kilometers of bike lanes around the country—many of which are in Budapest. To get an overview of the city, I took a four-hour bicycle tour. We pedaled high atop the ‘Buda’ side of the city to what is known as ‘Castle Hill,’ a UNESCO-designated ‘hood bursting with history, narrow cobblestone streets, a 13th-century church, and, of course the Royal Palace. Back down the hill and across the Danube one of the main thoroughfares of Pest is Andrássy street. This grand boulevard, in the same vein as the Champs-Elysees, extends over a mile, getting grander, greener, and less commercial the farther down it goes. Like much of Pest, the boulevard was constructed in the late 19th century, and its pedigree shows. Underneath it lies the European continent’s first metro line, opened in 1896, while above ground are scores of gorgeous late 19^th century buildings. The street ends with a bang at Heroes’ Square chock full of grand statues perched high atop Greek and Roman columns.

For a nice reprieve from the hot days of sightseeing, I made a trip to one of Budapest’s dozen or so baths. There are about one hundred natural hot springs all around the area feeding natural ‘spas’ that have been used since the time of the ancient Romans. One of the nicest is Gellert Baths. It is basically a beautiful complex of several pools of varying temperatures where you can soak in the medicinal waters and laze the day away on lounge chair.

As I get farther west into Europe, I have started to notice a greater mix of cultures and ethnicities than I’ve seen in many countries in South America, Southeast Asia, and Turkey. And I’m finally in a place where I completely blend in. Hungary was also a place where the Jews of the 20th century blended in. It was progressive in the fact that Jews here were part of society like anyone else and were simply considered Hungarian and were assimilated into the fabric of life. That’s why it was all the more shocking for them when the horrors of the Nazis finally reached Hungary toward the end of WWII. Built in 1859, the Dohány Street Synagogue, also known as the Great Synagogue, in Budapest is Europe’s largest synagogue and the second largest in the world (after Temple Emanu-el in New York City). It holds 3000 people seated and can swell to 6000 during the high holy days when it is standing room only. During WWII, the Gestapo literally housed its local headquarters inside the temple which ironically is one of the reasons the building itself survived. The Hungarian Nazi party, the Arrow Cross, seized control over the country in October 1944. The new government began slaughtering the Jews immediately, killing 600 people in the first days…and eventually 600,000. Papers and certificates allowing Jews to stay and work in the city were no longer valid. 50,000 Jewish men were forced on a ‘death march’ to dig fortifications against the approaching Soviet army. The area surrounding the synagogue became the ‘Jewish Ghetto,’ similar to many all over Europe at the time, where about 70,000 Jews were forced to live in a very small area behind a fence and could not leave. In all, over 50% of the Jews of Budapest perished in the Holocaust. At its height, the Jewish population of Hungary numbered close to one million, but the Holocaust and emigration has reduced that to around 100,000, most of who live in Budapest and its suburbs.

It wasn’t until 1991 that the reconstruction and renovation work was done in the Great Synagogue; thanks in large part to American actor Tony Curtis (born as Bernard Schwartz) whose Jewish father had left his home country of Hungary to find a better life in America. Today, Budapest has the third largest Jewish community in Europe after France and the UK with about 100,000 people.