House of Terror (Budapest, Hungary)

mattsochoki writes to recommend this site: “I found an article about this place which is a museum in Budapest to the communist secret police, it was also their former headquarters. The real treat is that I did some searching and found the official website for the place. [There are] some really interesting photos of the inside of this place. I highly recommend checking it out. I found it incredibly interesting that they not only acknowledged the communist secret police but made a whole museum.”

Rick Steves has an excellent article about this site, which includes the following fascinating info: “Budapest has recently opened one of the most powerful museums in Europe. Featuring the grim decades of Nazi and Communist repression, the museum is the former headquarters for the secret police of both the Nazi and Communist governments. The building’s awning has the word TERROR cut out of it, and when the sun projects through these letters, it symbolizes the terror which was projected onto the Hungarian people for fifty years. After allying themselves with Hitler to save their own skins (and their Jewish population), Hungary was overtaken by the Nazi-affiliated Arrowcross in the waning days of World War II. Arrowcross members did their best to exterminate Budapest’s Jews. They killed Jews 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 with him. They executed hundreds in the basement of this building.”