Hungary's New Holocaust Museum Isn't Open Yet, But It's Already Causing Concern
"Nearly 75 years ago, Hungarian police forced Rozsa Heisler onto a train, along with
thousands of other Hungarian Jews."
"'We were crammed together for five days without food or water,' she recalls. 'We didn't know where we were going. Then we reached Auschwitz.'"
"Heisler's mother and grandfather were murdered at the concentration camp. She and her sister, sent on to a labor camp, survived on leftover potato peels."
"Now 93, the bright-eyed great-grandmother lives in a cozy apartment in Budapest, a city she proudly calls home. But she has no illusions about the role her country played decades before. 'We didn't see any German soldiers until we reached Auschwitz,' she says. 'It was Hungarians who deported us.'"
"She says Hungary has never been able to face its complicity. That's why she and many other Hungarian Jews are skeptical of a new Holocaust museum in development in Budapest, costing more than $23 million and financed by the Hungarian state. The building was finished in 2015, but unease over what it will present has delayed its opening in the years since."