then some loud snorts of laughter when one wise acre pipes up: “Hey it looks blue to me!” We continue our guided tour through the heart of Budapest. The magnificent Parliament Buildings to our left, the historic and very beautiful Chain Bridge ahead in the distance.
“What’s this?” asks a woman strolling just ahead of us. “What are these iron shoes doing here?”
Our guide, suddenly somber, pauses for a moment. “Let me explain,” he says.” It’s very sad.” We gather in closer, the better to hear. Shocked but fascinated by what he is saying, I record the story he tells.
“Miklos Voglhut was, for many years, one of Hungary’s most loved and most famous singers. He performed frequently in many of our most popular cabarets during what I think you call the roaring twenties. It was a time when anti-Semitism was sweeping across Hungary and the rest of Europe so he changed his name to Miklos Vig. Vig in Hungarian means cheerful or merry.
He made countless recordings and performed many times at the Budapest Operetta Theatre and Budapest Orpheum and became one of Hungary’s first radio stars. He was beloved all around the country, the Frank Sinatra, if you like, of Hungary.
But In 1944, despite the fact he did not have a Jewish name and indeed had married into a Catholic family, our very own Hungarian Nazis—the Arrow Cross Party— rounded up Miklos along with many others from the Jewish ghetto. Like so many before him and many more after him, Miklos was forced to strip naked, take off his shoes on the banks of the Danube River, right here where we are standing now, then all were shot at close range so that they fell into the river and were washed away. This was common practice during 1944 and 1945.
What you see here along the banks of the Danube are 60 pairs of rusted shoes cast out of iron. As you can see they are shoes to reflect those styles being worn during those terrible years. And if you look closely you can see that no one was spared from the brutality of the Arrow Cross militia.”
Some of us are in tears by this time, especially when we walk along what is called the ”Shoes on the Danube” and can see children’s shoes.
Our guide points to a high stone bench with these words inscribed in Hungarian, English and Hebrew:
“TO THE MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS SHOT INTO THE DANUBE BY ARROW CROSS MILITIMEN IN 1944-45. ERECTED APRIL 2005”
I will be frank with you. Of all the memorials, including even the one at Vimy the “Shoes on the Danube museum” of Budapest is the one that haunts me still from time to time.
It is what our guide says next that prompts me to include his “Shoes on the Danube” story in this book.
“If you would like to get a better idea of Hungary’s struggle for freedom and independence,” he tells us, “you should visit the ‘House of Terror’ which we call ‘Terror Haza.’
Those words again—“the struggle for freedom and independence.”
CHAPTER NINE
TERROR HAZA (House of Terror)
Andrassy Boulevard is one of Budapest’s most beautiful thoroughfares. Lined by stately apartment buildings and fashionable storefronts, it connects downtown Budapest and the Danube with “Heroes Square” where students tore down the giant statue of Stalin during the 1954 Hungarian Revolution. The street is named after one of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s greatest Hungarian statesmen, Count Gyula Andrassy.
There is little to distinguish 60 Andrassy Blvd from the other neo-renaissance buildings that surround it except for a small sign that states simply “TERROR HAZA”.
Today 60 Andrassy is a museum. From 1937 until 1956 it was a house of unbelievable terror. A house of torture and murder.
Let me read directly from the visitor’s guide handed out to those who today visit what the Hungarians describe as, “ The statue of terror, a monument to the victims.
“The House of Terror” is a museum now, but it was witness to two shameful and tragic periods in Hungary’s 20th century history. It was truly a house of terror.
In 1944, during the gruesome domination of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, this building, known as the “House of Loyalty” was the party headquarters of the Hungarian Nazis.
Then between 1945 and 1956, the notorious communist terror organization, the AVO and its successor, the AVH, took up residence here. 60 Andrassy Boulevard had become the house of terror and dread.
This museum commemorates the victims of terror, but it is also a memento, reminding us of the dreadful acts of terrorist dictatorships.
As the guide explained to us as we explored the museum, The Arrow Cross Party was a group of Hungarians that established a governing body to collaborate with the Nazis. “France had Vichy, we had the Arrow Cross,” was the way he described it. “But the Arrow Cross was much more vicious, cruel and murderous than the Vichy Government of France. Any Jews still left in Hungary were killed or shipped off to concentration camps.”
He reminded us of the “Shoe Museum” we had seen only yesterday.
“In 1944 near the end of the war,” he explained, “many of us in Hungary wanted to end it. We wanted to surrender and try and reconstruct our lives. In response the Arrow Cross Party arrested thousands of us without warrants or charges. Many were taken to the basement of this building here at 60 Andrassy, tortured and killed.”
He pointed to a sewer grill in the middle of the basement floor. “That was for the blood,” he said.
According to our guide, even though the Nazis were near defeat, the Arrow Cross Party and their henchmen believed that Hitler would soon unleash a secret weapon, which would win the war for him, so thousands of teenaged boys were rounded up and sent to the Eastern Front to be massacred by the Russians.
In 1945, after the defeat of Hitler, one of the first things the Soviet occupiers did was take over 60 Andrassy Boulevard, establishing first the State Security Office (AVO) then the State Security Authority (AVH).
If possible the atrocities carried out at 60 Andrassy were even worse than under the Arrow Cross. “The officers serving at 60 Andrassy were masters of life and death, mostly death,” said our guide.
Here is how the official guidebook of “Terror Haza” describes those terrible days under the Soviets.
“During the most unimaginable and horrific interrogations lasting for weeks, many of the victims died. Those who survived the body-crushing and soul-debasing pain were ready to sign any document.
A whole host of informers, a shadow army, watched people on factory floors, in editorial rooms, in offices, at universities, in churches and theatres, noting down their every move. These informers received full backing as well as ideological and practical guidance from the Soviet occupiers. No one could feel safe from them. It was with their support that the Communists came to power and built up and preserved their hegemony-a tyrannical regime that seized, mistreated or crippled one person from every third family In Hungary.
The
