Budapest politicians tour new Holocaust museum, described as “shocking”

Historian Mária Schmidt introduced the mayor of Budapest’s 8th District and local city councillors to the almost completed new Holocaust museum, called the “House of Fates–European Education Centre” (in Hungarian: Sorsok Háza: Európai Oktatási Központ). The interpretive centre, housed in an abandoned train station and created with 6.6 billion forints ($25 million) in state support, relies heavily on personal stories to recount the history of the Holocaust. Following the visit, Fidesz Mayor Máté Kocsis noted that he hopes the museum would become a “world-class” interpretive centre, that would draw visitors to the district, putting this traditionally economically depressed part of Budapest on the cultural map. Mr. Kocsic added that the House of Fates, as a cultural institution, will become the “pride of the district.” Mayor Kocsis expects that the district’s high school students would be among the regular visitors.

“The 8th District has traditionally been home to a large Jewish community. As such, I would hope that local middle school and high school students would be able to discover a tragic part of their history,” said Mr. Kocsis. The museum’s permanent exhibit will focus on the impact of the Holocaust on youth and on children.

Mr. Kocsis said that he found the museum’s exterior design “shocking,” when he first saw it. The building certainly is very visible and even though it was still under construction when I visited Budapest this past March, the massive metal star–symbolizing the yellow star that Hungarian Jews had to wear starting in April 1944–looms over the street and the tram stop across from the museum.

House of Fates - Budapest: as seen in March 2015. Photo: Christopher Adam.

House of Fates – Budapest: as seen in March 2015. Photo: Christopher Adam.

House of Fates - Budapest, with the star (symbolizing the yellow star) looming over the street in front of the building. Photo: Christopher Adam

House of Fates – Budapest, with the star (symbolizing the yellow star) looming over Kerepesi street in front of the building in March 2015. Photo: Christopher Adam

“The knowledge that this museum will share with our youth is indispensable for the young people of today,” added Mr. Kocsis, who at just 34 years of age is, himself, among the youngest mayors in Hungary. “Hungarian youth, students and children need to learn that there are some periods in Hungarian history, when our Hungarian compatriots and our Jewish compatriots faced struggles that would be unacceptable at any point in time. And we need to understand that this pain and these tragedies destroyed families,” added Mayor Kocsis, who cautiously avoided broaching the issue of Hungarian culpability in the Holocaust and seemed to stress, as the museum likely will as well, the official government narrative of collective, Hungarian victimhood following Nazi Germany’s occupation of Hungary on March 19th, 1944.

Mayor Máté Kocsis tours the House of Fates museum.

Mayor Máté Kocsis tours the House of Fates museum.

The House of Fates museum is controversial. Hungary’s Jewish community was not involved in the initial discussions around the museum’s conceptual design, which date back to late 2013. Then earlier this year, the Prime Minister’s Office, led by minister János Lázár who has had an on-going conflict with historian Mária Schmidt, asked for written input on the planned museum from historians and Jewish community leaders, only to discover that most respondents felt that the interpretive centre was not conceptually sound. Mr. Lázár circulated a background document provided to him by Ms. Schmidt, but which apparently was not intended for wider distribution.

The Prime Minister’s Office emphasized that the centre could only open if it met with the approval of historians and Jewish community organizations, to which Ms. Schmidt suggested that Minister Lázár was attempting to “publicly discredit” the project, and that perhaps his advisor on matters pertaining to the Jewish minority, Gusztáv Zoltai, was driving these efforts. Mr. Zoltai is the controversial former leader of Hungary’s largest Jewish community umbrella organization, known by the acronym MAZSIHISZ, and a former member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which ruled Hungary during the pre-1989 dictatorship. Mr. Zoltai’s decision to now collaborate with the Orbán government was met with widespread anger within much of the Jewish community and in the opposition.

It is not yet known when the museum might be able to open to the public. Nor is it clear whether it will attract many visitors, beyond school groups, considering that it is located quite a distance (a metro ride and then a tram ride) from the relatively small inner ring of Budapest that is most frequented by tourists.

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