William Penn Life, 2017 (52. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2017-10-01 / 10. szám

Magyar Matters

The lessons of Memorial Park

Marx and Engel Memorial Park, Budapest

Photo ©Jan Kacar/ Dreamstime.com

by Kathy Megyeri

With the current controversy over the placement of some statues throughout the U.S., there are lessons to be learned from one of the most popular tourist destinations in Budapest: Memorial Park.

Located a short distance from center city, Memorial Park (also known as Memento Park) contains a collection of gigantic and imposing statuary and iconography of the Soviet era. Locals call it a theme park reminder of the overthrow of a dictatorship. It is a powerful open-air art gallery featuring 42 pieces of statuary constructed between 1945 and 1989. These reminders of socialism were removed from the city's streets because they offer a final glimpse behind the Iron Curtain. Some call the park "hundreds of tons of communism all in one place" because the original intent of these statues was to constantly remind people of how great and powerful the Soviet system was.

The statues depict infamous Communist leaders, including Lenin, Marx, Engels and Béla Kun. There is even a Liberation Army soldier holding a hammer and sickle flag with a cartridge-disc machine pistol hanging from his neck. Many of these statues once stood on top of Gellért Hill in Budapest.

Probably the most photographed in the collection is Stalin's boots. On Oct. 23,1956, an angry crowd tried to pull Stalin's statue off its pedestal located in Central Budapest where Communist leaders would stand while waving to the crowds.

My husband László, a 15-year-old Freedom Fighter at that time, vividly remembers that event at Heroes' Square:

The angry crowd tried pulling it down with ropes, but they were unsuccessful. So the welders came and cut it off from the top of Stalin's boots. They dragged it to downtown where they spit on it, sprayed it with graffiti and chipped off pieces to take as souvenirs. I stood and watched as I could not get close enough to desecrate it myself. It symbolized everything the Hungarians hated about communism, especially May Day parades where dignitaries stood in front of it and waved to the crowds. That day's action was the beginning of the movement to pull down the rest of the statues. Even communist bookstores were burned. The Hungarian tri-colored flags were lowered to cut out the center sickle and hammer. Sadly, 2,500 Hungarians were killed in ‘56.

Memorial Park marks not only the '56 Revolution but also the collapse of the Soviet system in 1989-90. In 1991, the Hungarian General Assembly held a competition to design the park and Hungarian architect Ákos Eleőd won. Of his work, Eleőd said:

This park is about dictatorship. And at the same time, because it can be talked about, described, and built, this park is about democracy. After all, only democracy is able to give the opportunity to let us think fully about dictatorship. This park is not about statues or sculptors but a critique of the ideology that used these statues as symbols of authority.

The park's grand opening in 1993 coincided with the second anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungarian territory.

In addition to viewing Stalin's boots and Red Army soldiers' statues, there are other reasons to visit. The museum and exhibition space, housed in a single-story wooden structure that looks like an internment camp building, shows a documentary that explains the political secret service. Entitled "Life of an Agent," the film shows recruitment methods, secret surveillance techniques and instructions on how to effectively plant a bug.

At the Red Star Store, a gift shop where capitalism thrives in the midst of the remains of the Soviet regime, visitors can buy badges, posters, t-shirts, flasks with hammer and sickle symbols, communist marching music on CD's, postcards, candles in the shape of Lenin, and best of all, a small tin can that holds the "last breath of Communism." One can even pick up the phone and place a call to Lenin, Stalin and Mao on the Communist Hot Line.

However, I found the real irony of this entire complex expressed on a plaque inside the museum that read:

These statues are a part of the history of Hungary. Dictatorships chip away at and plaster over their past in order to get rid of all memories of previous ages. Democracy is the only regime that is prepared to accept that our past with all the dead ends is still ours; we should get to know it, analyze it, and think about it.

That is the real souvenir from Memorial Park I wanted to take home. □