Walking into the House of Terror Museum in Budapest feels a bit like entering a nightmare. The dimly lit corridors, the oppressive silence, and the stories of suffering all serve as a powerful reminder of a time when the rule of law was erased. The terror museum stands in a unique spot a former headquarters for regimes that disregarded fairness and justice. It shows us how easily a legal system can become a tool of oppression when people lose their safeguards. The rule of law is not a distant ideal. It is something we need daily. Without it, power finds a way to destroy the freedoms we take for granted.
A Historical Background
The building at 60 Andrássy Avenue was first a base for the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party during the Second World War. Later, it fell into the hands of the Soviet-backed ÁVH state security service. Inside these walls, countless people were interrogated, tortured, and condemned without a fair trial. The legal institutions were not there to protect the people; instead, they enforced the will of a ruling ideology. The result was a dramatic collapse of justice and a weakening of the very structures meant to maintain a fair society.
How Dictators Twisting the Rule of Law
One key feature of a dictatorship is its ability to manipulate the legal framework. The regimes that occupied this building did not destroy the law outright; instead, they kept the form of a legal system while ignoring its principal components. For example, …