House of Terror = House of Propaganda

While our colleagues rehearse intensely using Hungarian language, me and Mihaela M. visit, as part of the documentary process, the famous House of Terror, the Budapest Museum that aims to gather under the same roof ”the horrors of the two criminal regimes - fascist and communist”. The building is imposing, everything looks tough, solemn and frightening. I get a discount from the super-nice and smiling ticket lady, as I am under 26. The plan of the Museum seems not that smart, as there is no preset route. We try to reach the 3rd (last) floor, the elevator doesn’t cooperate, so we stop at the second. Finally, we found the exhibition halls. As we are walking among screens, military uniforms, walls covered by hundreds of pictures, ‘50s objects and carpets with the map of Siberia, I am slowly getting angry. Out of 4 floors, 3 and a half refer to “the communist regime”, or to be more accurate to the “Hungarian tragedy of the Soviet occupation”. Everywhere (from what I understand, as most information is only available in Hungarian, which proves that the Museum is strictly addressed to Hungarians) you read or hear about the crimes against the Hungarians, against the Hungarian nation. Crimes enabled, one can presume, by „non-Hungarians” – meaning soviet occupation troops. The implication of several Hungarians is only shown in a small corner, where you can see the photos of the fascist and communist Hungarian leaders. The biggest part of the museum is full of soviet uniforms, soviet propaganda posters, symbols of USSR, portraits of Stalin and interviews with survivors that talk about their struggle for... the Hungarian identity.
But the most perverse idea of the museum is mixing the „communist terror” with the „Nazi terror”! The Nazi period is exposed incredibly blurry and superficial, in less than a half of the second floor, without any figures about the deaths, without any testimonies of the survivors, and, most outrageous, revealed as... the Nazi Germany occupation. The name of Horthy is not even mentioned, the Hungarian fascist republic is barely talked about and all the persecutions seem actions of the German Nazis. Therefore, another attempt on the Hungarian sovereignty! The lack of balance is striking – there is no English mention of the number of Jews killed in Hungary and the Hungarian occupied territories (Northern Transylvania, Southern Ruthenia etc.) – over 300.000! – but there are mentioned less than 500 death penalties, in the communist regime, between 1946 and 1955. Not even explaining how many of these convicted were actually war criminals. The perfect example of a frame that is purposely misleading is this big wall in the middle of a room, written on one side Soviet Occupation and on the other side Nazi Occupation and showing footage of crimes and deportations of both regimes. Like the fascist terror would have been carried out by the German invaders and not by the Hungarian horthyst regime!
The cherry on top is also placed at the second floor: a multi-media map, changing from 1914 to 1945, of (very) Big Hungary. The map finely shows how the initial big powerful Hungary included entire Transylvania, Serbian and Romanian Banat, Ruthenia, Croatia and a part of Central Serbia. And how they lost these territories one after another and then recovered some parts during WW2. The moral: Yes, fascism was bad, but at least we got some territories back! And then came communists and took away all the land!
After such a fulfilling history lesson every visitor should understand: how terrible the communism imposed by Soviet occupation has been; how it destroyed and decimated the Hungarian people; that not even Nazism, also imposed, by the Germans, can be compared to the communist threat. But any visitor who reads between the lines, especially being a Romanian Jew :), will get the impression of a disgusting attempt of nationalistic propaganda and manipulation of history, in the purest Bolshevik style.
Me and Mihaela were just asking ourselves afterwards what do they teach in schools if this is how they treat Nazism in the House of Terror. In this context why be surprised by the emergence of the Hungarian guard? How can extreme right not flourish out of this mixture of poverty and nationalist manipulation and propaganda? How can the Roma, the Jews and the homosexuals not be hunted under these circumstances? With such a statement and drive given by the newest, most elegant, updated and cool museum of Budapest? To know precisely where this statement is coming from, one may just read the leaflet: The House of Terror Museum was built with the support of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
This “documentation visit” made us understand once again how relevant, needed and edgy is a project like Word for Word for the Hungarian public space! And also made us realize that a Romanian House of Terror would hardly be any different…

Workshop Questions

During the workshop in December, each participant focused on various issues – the method adopted when making an interview, the legal implication of using Gypsy instead of Roma, the problems regarding the forced migration, the mythology of the pure identity, a survey regarding different forms of discrimination, a game testing how easy we function in a preconceived frame, what means to transform an anti Roma attitude into a radical gesture and a debate emphasizing the relation between representation and language.
The workshop had a final presentation, structured in a fragmented manner, in which the issues discussed during a week found their proper place.
One of the recurrent questions during the workshop was: if we talk about Roma communities should we have Roma people among us? Can we represent someone if he or she is not present? Can a proper representation be done in the absence of the subjected represented? But, in fact, what is our drive? To talk about the discrimination dynamics of the majority or to point to the situation of the minority? Or both?

Workshop Pics

Starting Point

It began as international workshop facing a harsh reality, provocative for a theatre project. In 2008 and 2009 in Hungarian villages, Roma families have been persecuted and some of the members of these families have been killed. The racial incidents happened in an extremist political context that affected and discriminated Roma communities, imposing violent attitudes as public behavior.
PanoDrama initiated a workshop in December 2010, in which took part actors, directors, playwrights and dramaturges from Hungary, Romania, England, Denmark, Germany. The workshop had as special guest the dramaturge of Rimini Protokoll – Sebastian Brunger.
The main issue of the workshop was the multifarious aspects of discrimination, from expatriating Kosovo Roma families from Germany to killing an old man in front of a mosque in London or to building a fence in order to separate Hungarians from Romanians and Roma population in a village in Romania.
The accent was put on Hungarian racial crimes, the way they were mediated in press and the political interventions that proved abominable in a democratic society.
The questions raised during the workshop are relevant for the dynamics of an extremist context in which the power of controlling entire communities through violence and submission becomes a way of terrorizing and depriving people of freedom. To transform crimes in regular accidents (as the police did in one of the villages) means to corrupt the very idea of fundamental rights and to transform communities in centers of terror.