terror házá

today i made my second visit to the house of terror museum (it's free on sundays for EU students!). it's on andrassy avenue, a gorgeous tree lined street full of posh stores and gorgeous buildings that ends with the incredible hero's square. however, the museum used to be headquarters for the nazi and communist regimes, so it doesn't have such a beautiful past.
the museum is amazingly set up. it looks incredibly modern, and there is effective mood setting music throughout. flat screen tvs everywhere show images of people under the regimes, speaking of the regimes, and speeches being delivered.
it's slightly frustrating being an english speaker there though. each room has a piece of paper in english giving historical information (lots of reading!) but the descriptions of what we are actually seeing are all in hungarian. however, it's pretty easy to get the idea that a lot of suffering was going on, and it should never happen again.
as you make your way down to the basement, an elevator slowly takes you down while showing a video of a man describing the hanging and torturing process. that's when it really hits you how many people were tortured and killed in the same building where you're standing. walking through the reconstructed prison cells is such an eerie feeling, it's amazing that people could actually do such things to each other. it's also disturbing how few people know about the atrocities that took place during the communist regime. having been to house of terror and recsk, the former death camp, it's so weird knowing that people were treated as such subhumans, yet we hardly hear of it. i'm as guilty as anyone else, i'd never know this much about it had i not been here.
at the end there is a beautiful memorial for the people who died. however, perhaps the most chilling part is a hallway full of pictures and names of the victimizers. it's sickening to look at the people and know the horrible things they did. they look like they could be anyone, but they were capable of such awful things.
house of terror definitely is a must see in budapest.