HUNGARY/FILE: Hungarian historians consider the role played by secret police, ahead of opening of German film on Stasi

Record ID: 644927

  • Title: HUNGARY/FILE: Hungarian historians consider the role played by secret police, ahead of opening of German film on Stasi
  • Date: 26th February 2007
  • Summary: CLOSE UP OF FILM POSTER
  • Embargoed: 13th March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: History
  • Reuters ID: LVADHRXASWPYL357FIN98K4219W0
  • Story Text: Oscar-nominated German film "The Lives of Others", opened in Hungary this week, re-igniting debate about the role of secret police and files in Hungary's recent past.
    The film is a drama set in totalitarian East Germany before the falling of the Berlin Wall, and its release has encouraged historians to discuss a similar period in Hungarian history.
    Ahead of the opening, leading historians held a roundtable talk in Budapest's House of Terror Museum. The museum opened five years ago and is dedicated to the victims of totalitarians regimes, focusing on the history of the communist dictatorship in Hungary.
    Those attending the roundtable were able to see a section of the film, before debate began.
    A leading Oscar contender for Best Foreign Language Film, the German movie begins in 1984 when the secret police, or Stasi, routinely bugged, tailed and intimidated citizens.
    The film is expected to revive the issue in Hungary about its own secret files and communist past legacy. The historians at the roundtable talk agreed that Hungary should have also made a similar film about its own past and raised the question of why such films are still not being created.
    "This was a dictatorship all the way," Gyorgy Marko, historian and former director of the secret services historical archives said.
    "It became obvious to me as I studied the files, it was a dictatorship until the end [of the regime]. And I think our main problem is that we decided to think it, because this is more comfortable for people. That the Kadar regime became more and more soft, a goulash communism, the merriest barrack and precisely because of this we do not face up to this recent past. It is easy for the East Germans to distance themselves from this hard and open dictatorship but here we would need to admit that we too are a little guilty, that we were, at least a little bit, part of the machinery," he added.
    Other historians pointed out that the Hungarian change of regime did not bring any real closure and some people who were implicated in the communist regime are still in power.
    And of those who were revealed to have co-operated with the secret services few apologized publicly.
    "Everyone can do bad things," said film critic, Gyorgy Baron.
    "In a dictatorship many more people do bad things than in a democracy and it is revealed sooner. But this film is precisely about, the main character is a Stasi agent who goes through a catharsis. That man can change. This is what the whole Greek-Jewish-Christian culture is based on. A man can change and we can forgive but for this the minimum requirement is that he should not be content with the bad things he did but should be able to face his deeds," he said.
    Unlike other ex-communist countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary has not revealed the names of secret police collaborators from the communist era. Attempts to pass a law that would open up all files have repeatedly failed over the past decade. Several versions of "agent laws" were passed but all with strict data and personality protection limits.
    Critics argue that a proper "dossier-law" should be made which would open all files and documents of all the numerous departments of the secret services before 1990. These documents should be made fully available for the public with only the basic privacy restrictions.
    Historian Maria Schmidt says denying the past is harmful to society.
    "We are full of cramps, spasms, untold pains, burdens, unfulfilled hopes, lots of illusions that came to nothing because of this [lack of acknowledgement]."
    As the Lives of Others opened in Hungarian cinemas the first reactions and reviews were positive.
    "I really liked it. Especially the part showing how in the present people who were watched and who were watching live side by side. It makes one think," Janos Gaspar said.
    "It's about the importance of facing up. It is very rare that a historical film has a topical effect and I think the Hungarian viewers have a lot to think about after this film," added Peter Magyari.
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