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Terror Háza | |
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House of Terror | |
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| Established | 24 February 2002 |
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| Location | Budapest, Hungary |
| Coordinates | 47°30′25″N19°03′54″E / 47.5069°N 19.0651°E /47.5069; 19.0651 |
| Director | Mária Schmidt |
| Website | terrorhaza |
TheHouse of Terror (Hungarian:Terror Háza Múzeum,pronounced[ˈtɛrːorˈhaːzɒˈmuːzɛum]) is a museum located atAndrássy Avenue 60 in Budapest, Hungary. It contains exhibits related to thefascist andcommunist regimes in 20th-century Hungary and is also a memorial to the victims of these regimes, including those detained, interrogated, tortured, or killed in the building.
The museum opened on 24 February 2002, and its director general has beenMária Schmidt.
The House of Terror is a member organization of thePlatform of European Memory and Conscience.[1] Visitors includingZbigniew Brzezinski,Francis Fukuyama, andHayden White have praised the institution.[2][3]
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The building was previously used by theArrow Cross Party andÁVH.
In December 2000, the Public Foundation for the Research ofCentral and Eastern European History and Society purchased it with the aim of establishing a museum in order to commemorate thefascist andcommunist periods ofHungarian history.
During the year-long construction period, the building was fully renovated. The internal design, the final look of the museum's exhibition hall, and the external facade are all the work of architectAttila Ferenczfy-Kovács [hu]. The reconstruction plans for the museum were designed by architectsJános Sándor and Kálmán Újszászy. The reconstruction turned the exterior of the building into somewhat of a monument: the black exterior structure (consisting of the decorative entablature, the blade walls, and the granite footpath) provides a frame for the museum, making it stand out in sharp contrast to the other buildings onAndrássy Avenue.
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The museum's permanent exhibition contains material related to the nation's relationships toNazi Germany and theSoviet Union. It also contains exhibits related to Hungarian organisations such as the fascistArrow Cross Party and the communistÁVH (similar to the SovietKGB). Part of the exhibition takes visitors to the basement, where examples of cells used by the ÁVH to torture prisoners can be seen.


Some historians, journalists, and political scientists such as Magdalena Marsovszky or Ilse Huber have argued that the museum excessively portrays Hungary as the victim of foreign occupiers and does not sufficiently recognise the contribution that Hungarians themselves made to the regimes in question.[4][5]