BUDAPEST

Neither of us had ever been, so given the opportunity to go the Budapest, we jumped at it.  Autumn, the perfect time…a new country, a capitol of renown in our sites and off we went.  It did not disappoint. Stunning, a mini Paris of sorts architecturally, impressive restorations in full swing, sparkly clean, kindness in the culture, each walk was more beautiful than the last, fabulous restaurants, inviting cafes, landscaped parks, efficient and negotiable public transit…it was easy to feel welcomed.  Those were our first and, in many ways, lasting impressions.  Like most places though, there was also an undercurrent and even if we could not articulate it, we could feel it.  I think the first place I became aware of the flip side was at the edge of the graceful Danube whilst standing by the shoes art installation which commemorates the last act of Jews who had been forced into the river by Nazis. Had the unwillingly barefooted owners of those shoes been quaking in their last moments? Had they caught the eye of a Nazi hoping for some trace of humanity before being unceremoniously shot or merely forced into the river? To what god had they cried? How many generations of possibilities and hearts shattered in the terror?  Standing on the flats of the Pest banks as we did, you could look up toward the hills of the Buda side that supported magnificent churches and statues reaching aspirationally, toward the sky. None of that beauty had mattered. Evil won that day. Those days. Those years. Indeed those decades, well beyond WWII. 

We were told that we had to visit the House of Terrors Museum…from the outside, a charming city villa in the center of town. The interior told a very different story…chilling, gruesome.  The building had been one of the places the Nazis had perpetrated unspeakable crimes during their occupation of Hungary and at the end of WWII, the Soviets carried on the Nazis’ brutal traditions. This edifice had been a center through which hundreds of thousands of Hungarians had been exiled to gulags in Siberia. (The last Hungarian prisoner had been returned to Hungary in 2000.) Teenagers had been executed there, people unspeakably tortured. The three storied building did level best to present the facts and in so doing bore witness to humanity at its most monstrous. It was a virtual, visual journey into an unimaginable hell and it shook us at the core. It also served as a vivid cautionary tale.

We had a happy reunion with a friend from Budapest, a former and very brilliant theatre colleague. I’ll call him Andras. Our time with him was short, so after dispensing with the necessary surface life catch up, we dove in.  Andras and Orban had been university mates decades ago…Orban, Andras said, was brilliant then but that power had got ahold of his inner life and off the rails he’d gone. Further he said that Orban has been “Undoing democracy, democratically.” That was chilling. Over the course of the Prime Minister’s reign, gay themed books have been banned, there is an ongoing government campaign of historical revisionism designed to look favorably on Russia, branches of government have been undermined and thus slowly killed off, there has been a systematic installation of conservative judges, ongoing climate change denial, media o’er taken, experimental arts defunded. Orban, a glacial nightmare. US beware.

Andras had alerted us to a student demonstration that was to take place that early evening. We felt duty bound somehow to go. It was to start at one of the main bridges with plans to march to Parliament Square.  As we waited in the square we could hear the chanting crowd approach. Riot police were out in number, geared and waiting. We spotted cameras on tripods on the Parliament steps aimed at the empty square waiting to capture images of whoever turned up apparently.  They seemed more a warning than truly ominous. 

As the chanting drew nigh, we could see the first wave…it was fun. Party like, festive and thank heavens, peaceful. We noted as the demonstrators started to grow in number in the square, that they were a multi-generational population, made up presumably of students and admin. The look in their eyes ranged from hopeful to despairing. Maybe it was seeing the intentionality in their eyes, the purpose in their steps but I suddenly found myself in tears in the midst of it all…a visceral reminder that it can happen, it, the unthinkable, has happened here. Like traveling into a possible future, one to which we are headed, if we do not continue to do what we can. When we told Andras of the similarities in the US to tectonic plates shifts he had described, he was stunned. Said they here as democrats and rational conservatives alike, whilst certainly aware of Trump and his direct correlation to Orban, had not realized things had gone so far in the US. That they look to America as the hope… and surely it would prevail.  We told him we remained hopeful but were not sure, not sure at all.  

So as not to close out focused entirely on devolution of democracy as we have known it, let me say that toward the end of the gut wrenching displays at the House of Terrors, was an account of the Hungarian Uprising of October 1955. A day when there was a nationwide revolt against the Soviets.  How had that been possible? They’d had no internet, there were eyes everywhere, terror reigned and yet…all the better virtues came together to laugh in the face of evil that day. Where had the fuel for hope come from? The citizens of that revolt had no means, dire consequences were the promise, evil seemed omnipresent and yet hope and freedom and courage, solidarity, promise, love, intelligence, life, human rights…all of that burst through. That hard won victory did not really come until 1990 but it had been a tipping point in consciousness and one that however eventually, had won the day. I hope it wins ours as well.