Week 14

Images: Railway tunnel along the tracks between Esztergom(H) and Budapest(H).

I visited the House of Terror Museum in Budapest this week as a mental and emotional preparation for an intended visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland later this year. The House of Terror Museum used to be the place where during Nazi and communist times people were interrogated and tortured. The visit helped me to articulate questions that I will use as a reference when I will visit Auschwitz:

How do or can people pick-up life again after experiencing the worst possible atrocities of torture, war and terror? How do you come out of a tunnel of darkness and enter into the light? How can you forgive those who tortured and abused you? How can you ever have faith in people, enjoy a party, enjoy life? I only know stories of people who remained victims and scarred physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually for the rest of their lives. How can one recover?

I suppose I have an opportunity to observe how people recover in Slovakia and Hungary. What I do not know is how people were before fascism came here and which aspects of their human behaviour developed because the way they were treated by the regime.

Buddhist and related spiritual philosophies have an answer I think. Forgiveness and understanding of karmic relationships are key to the solution, but for me it is a theory only as I do not know of anyone who has been able to actually put the theory into practice. I would love to meet such a person and make a documentary, if that is not possible, at least explore the idea in video.

In one video in the House of Terror a crying man (victim) poses the question: ...but one is supposed to forgive somehow, no?



29/1 Monday
All is well, bridge still standing.



30/1 Tuesday
All is well, bridge still standing.



31/1 Wednesday
All is well, bridge still standing.



1/2 Thursday
All is well, bridge still standing.



2/2 Friday
All is well, bridge still standing.



3/2 Saturday
All is well, bridge still standing.



4/2 Sunday
All is well, bridge still standing.