Cells of learning and memory
Memorial Museum of Communism’s Victims and the Resistance, Sighetu Marmatiei
MúzeumCafé 26.
The prison in Máramarossziget (today Sighetu Marmaţiei in Romania) was built in 1897 and, still standing today, it can be clearly seen that its size alone commanded authority. In contrast, most of the town’s synagogues have been demolished, such that the traces of Hasidism are found primarily in texts – information about the town’s multi-ethnic culture spread far and wide, thanks largely to the work of Elie Wiesel, who was from Máramarossziget. After the Jews, the Germans, then eventually all the religious and ethnic communities vanished in accordance with which way the political wind was blowing. Thus the prison building itself is a product of an era which had partly ceased to exist before the period of state socialism and which finally disappeared due to the Communists. The urban solitude of the building in no small measure is linked to the lives of those whose existence the museum is destined to recall. The current context of the museum clearly presents it as a stronghold of memory as well as a monument. The high wall of the prison effectively shuts out the present-day town, and in its enclosed spaces visitors can truly embark on a journey into history. This all signifies that the museum/memorial place is entirely suited for the function it was created for – teaching the new generations and making amends to the survivors. Visitors who are only now becoming acquainted with the dark history of communism can ‘master’ the prison via the displays in the cells and the closed isolated spaces. The spatial experience and the never-ending cells provide the possibility for today’s generations to make a direct connection with the past, with those who spent years between the walls, often until their death. A crucial point is that authenticity or (re)constructed authenticity is at issue, whether something created or the location of memory is concerned. The prison was closed in 1977, following which it became a brush factory, then after the political changes it was turned into a museum. I don’t know by what means and whether it is at all possible to fully reconstruct – after the period from 1977 to 1989 – the experience of those times, but it’s a fact that the representation of that, namely the sensory experience, enriches the museum experience, making it more comprehensive. As regards the educational aspect, the decisive part of the museum narrative objectively and without exaggeration or excessive emotion leads the visitor through the years from 1945 to 1989. In each episode/cell indisputably important information is presented in a factual manner. Undoubtedly the accomplishment would have been made more spectacular with multi-media elements involving state-of-the-art visual effects, but clearly the lack of finance accounts for the rather modest presentation with texts and photos playing a dominant role, alongside the use of original or appropriate objects. In my view, this has a much better effect than the usual visual and rhetorical overstatements encountered in Hungary, where the lack of a pure, clear narrative is concealed by a hollow spectacle. However, in connection with the narrative in Sighetu Marmaţiei I have two serious reservations. The first, which refers to the Hungarians’ role, reflects the fact that I am inevitably biased. Nevertheless, as regards the presentation of events in the 1980s the exhibition, to put it mildly, is neither extensive nor precise. It’s as if there had never been any question of wiping out villages populated by ethnic Hungarians, as if the issue of enforced assimilation had disappeared (it’s not even raised for discussion). It is obvious that from the perspective of the dominant Romanian view of history the destruction of the monasteries in Bucharest was a greater calamity than the destruction of the villages. Yet facts are facts. I also understand why the exhibition is somewhat uncertain with the final displays. I’m sure there’s a great deal of sensitivity, as well as unspoken and unspeakable tension concerning the (not particularly velvety) revolution and a tendency only to look favourably on the spectacular TV putsch with its sad and troubling history, not to mention the shocking execution of the Ceauşescu couple or the bloody events in Timişoara, which still demand an explanation. Of course, it’s inconvenient to acknowledge the brave and significant role of the Hungarian minority in those events, which could be described as falling between a half revolution and a coup d’état. It was all more serious, complex and painful than the exhibition implies. My other, more worrying problem concerns how the exhibition presents and interprets the role of Iuliu Maniu, the leader of the National Peasants’ Party who served as prime minister a number of times between 1928 and 1933. He was arrested by the authorities in 1947 and sentenced after a show trial. He died within the prison walls in 1953 as a result of an unjust sentence, in inhuman conditions. His body was buried in a mass grave. Maniu started out as a politician in the time of the Dual Monarchy. He studied in Vienna and Budapest and was a National Party MP in the Hungarian parliament for several terms prior to 1918. His name was adopted by a paramilitary organisation whose members killed many Romanian citizens of Hungarian ethnicity – cruelly and without explanation, purely and simply because of nationalism, for no other reason. In the room devoted to the memory of Maniu there is no mention of all this, the main emphasis is put on anti-communist struggle, which while being understandable is not easy to explain. Looking at it with Hungarian eyes, it is unacceptable. With the memory of these deficiencies in respect of a painful and troubling partiality, the visitor leaves the museum building for the courtyard and the locations of memory, entering a space of prayer, meditation and memory designed by the young Romanian architect Radu Mihailescu. Here on the wall by the ramp leading under the courtyard are the names of the 16,000 people who in prisons and camps lost their lives as victims of communism. The underground, cross-shaped space recalling an early Christian basilica open to the sky is truly suitable for meditation and reconciliation, which visitors are really in need of. Moving on, you reach the inner courtyard under the watch-tower beside the tall brick wall and a sculpture depicting the martyrs. Its fourteen figures, larger than life-size but still accessible, are at the same time of rather mythical proportions. The sculpting of the figures echoes Henry Moore’s classical modernism, while simultaneously recalling the similarly emblematic concentration camp figures known across Europe from Buchenwald to Mauthausen. This reference is understandable and corresponds to the perspective of equivalence between the victims of totalitarianism, which can be criticised historically but which in the rhetoric of aesthetics is indisputable as well as ethically justifiable. We can deem the placement of the statue group in the courtyard as a positive accomplishment – the figures with raised hands, albeit with drooped shoulders, in no way allow for a heroic interpretation, but the composition clearly recalls the meaningless and terrible annihilation which was their fate.