Both a museum and a memorial, the House of Terror (Terror Háza) stands at Andrássy út 60, the very building where victims of the fascist Arrow Cross then the Communist Secret Police (ÁVH) were taken during and after World War II. This gripping permanent exhibition commemorates those who were detained, interrogated, tortured or killed within these walls. The accent is on the early 1950s and the hideous brutality that followed the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. As always, the banality of evil strikes hardest – you might catch a video interview with one of the guards who describes ripping up last letters to loved ones desperately scribbled by detainees. Though echoing a dark period of Hungarian history, the museum does give first-time visitors a better understanding of the country’s complex political background.
