Budapest Museum and Historical Context

Well, hello from a very sunny Budapest. It is Tuesday.

It's a lovely day, and I'm standing here on Andrássy Avenue,

one of

Budapest's most beautiful streets.

And behind me, right there, you can see the House of Terror.

The House of Terror is a museum dedicated to terror,

specifically to two eras, but mainly really one.

So if you walk in the door, you will see signs of

Hungary's very sad and very oppressive history.

There's part of the museum that's, uh, dedicated to World War II,

and of course the Holocaust, and then there is another part of the

museum

which is donated to Communist-era history.

When the fall of the Wall came and everything sort of collapsed, this

building was actually put up for sale, and what they

discovered is that no one wanted to buy it because the building

itself has a very, very bad vibe because

lots of really bad things happened there. Lots of people were tortured there.

Lots of people were brought in for questioning there.

My grandfather spent time in this building being questioned for

his anti-communist beliefs. And there are connections

to thousands of Hungarian families, if not tens of thousands

of Hungarian families. But it's in the news today

because it is changing. So it has been

nationalized. The former director, a woman called

Maria Schmidt, she is a historian.

She is slightly strange-looking because she has a lazy eye,

so, uh, when she's staring, things don't seem quite

right. She's also a very big figure in Fidesz.

In fact, when Viktor Orbán was recently photographed

and filmed being on holiday in Croatia, he was spending

time with Maria Schmidt in her house somewhere

there in Croatia. But now the building and the museum

itself is being re-nationalized. Maria Schmidt is gone.

But what makes things bad, and the reason why I'm annoyed, the reason

I'm starting to think that Tisa is a liberal party in

disguise, sort of a Fabian society attempt

at power by Tisa,

is because they are now going to close only the Communist

section of the museum. They're going to close it because they

want to

reexamine whether it's historically accurate.

Before, when you walked into the museum, if you went into the basement, there were

names down there on the wall, names of people who had worked

in this building itself. Some of those names, I'm sure, worked

as torturers, because that was a thing.

Yes, you can call it questioning, but it was torture.

Torture wasn't the only bad thing that happened in here.

Pe- some people were also executed in here.

So it's a horrible, horrible place, and my

fear is that they're not just going to close it down for a

short while and reexamine things.

They're going to close it down and then hope people forget about it.

There was a previous attempt to close this building down, and then it

caused a big fuss. This was under Gyurcsány when he was the

head of the Socialist Party. They made moves to shut it down, and that

brought about a massive march here on the street to make sure

that they understood that this is important to Hungarians.

Unfortunately, I think that generation of Hungarians have,

have passed

away.

People who were directly affected by this building have passed away, and it's

just left to the family of people who were affected by this

building to speak out, and I think most of them, unfortunately,

don't

care. But communism, make no mistake, was an awful

time. The people who say that communism was, well,

it's still a question

whether or not it was good or bad. No.

When Hungary was a communist country, you should not forget that Hungary

was a prison. Hungary wasn't a place you could just

leave.

If you wanted to travel abroad, you had to get a letter of invitation from

someone. The chances of you being able to travel

abroad, you,

your wife, and your family, was basically zero because they

knew that if you all left, you would probably not come back.

Communism was horrible, but I think this move here by Tisa

to get rid of this museum, even if it's for a short period of

time, is also a horrible sign.

So here's the building itself.

It's a lovely old building.

Um, unfortunately, the memories, uh, housed within, within this

building mean it's unlivable.

This reads, "Kikérte kartok, hősök falla

1956."

Um, "For those who died for you,

um, a heroes' wall, 1956." That is the day of our revolution.

If you look at these names and dates, you see that most of these are

1958,

and the revolution was 1956,

so these people were executed

two years after the revolution

for crimes against the state.

But now they're considered heroes

because that's what they are. '59,

'59,

'59.

Look at this one. Super famous. Incredibly famous.

Peter Monszfeld.

Uh, he was executed at the age of 18, and the reason he's famous

is because the communists kept him in prison and alive

until he was 18 so they could execute him,

because there was no mercy

in that system whatsoever.

However, things aren't all bad on the Communist

front because today Magyar

Péter, our prime minister, he announced that they have

finally agreed to open up the secret police

files, files, redacted files, that have been

kept secret for far too long. Because Hungary under communism,

there were lots of people who didn't work directly for the government but

worked for the government as a sideline, spying

on people who they thought might be an issue.

I know that in our family, there was one person who did this.

Um, I say this because, uh, a while ago they did release

redacted files, but in those files, the only names that were

hidden were the names of the people whose names you wanted to know,

specifically the names who, of people who were informing on you.

And when my dad went in to get his files, he

discovered that, yes, there were conversations held around our dining

table that were noted down, but the

person who informed upon us, that name was redacted.

So I, together with, I think, hundreds of thousands, if not millions

of Hungarians affected directly, indirectly by, by this,

are very happy at Tisa's decision to

release these files unredacted. This is going to

happen for Revolution Day, that is October the 23rd.

So I expect them hopefully to be online and searchable on

October the 22nd. So today, a bit of bad news about

the museum and a bit of good news about those files.

That's all for now. If you like my stuff, give me a like, give me a share. Thanks.