Communism kills

I went to Budapest last year and did the usual touristy things. I climbed up the hill to the fantasy castle walls in Buda. I took a boat ride. I went to the Turkish baths — edging cautiously into scalding hot water and then summoning up the courage to tip a bucket of cold water over myself.

Finally, I reached the grim end of the tourist trail: the so-called House of Terror. On the outside, it looked like every other Hungarian house on the boulevard. Inside, it was a museum set up in the actual place where first Nazis, then communists, inflicted imprisonment, terror and murder. Visiting it was a powerful emotional experience. You see the actual basement cells where prisoners were tortured or hanged. There was a ‘standing cell’ with no room to sit down, where prisoners were beaten if they even leaned against a wall. My girlfriend found it so overwhelming that she had to be helped out.