The House of Terror sounds like the title of a Hammer horror movie. Unfortunately, the building - 60 Andrassy Street in Budapest - is no fiction but a real location where thousands of people suffered death and torture between the years 1944-56. Andrassy Street is a boulevard of impressive buildings connecting the city centre of Budapest to Heroes' Square and its art galleries and museums. It is named after Count Andrassy, one of the Hapbsburg Empire's most eminent Hungarian statesmen. During the early years of communist power it was renamed Stalin Avenue but in 1956 its names was changed to the Avenue of the People's Republic, and in 1989 it reverted to its original name. Number 60 was designed as a block of luxury apartments by Adolf Feszty in 1880, and was privately owned until 1944 when it was taken over by the Arrow Cross Party. Admiral Horthy ruled Hungary as a right-wing dictator after the crushing of Bela Kun's brief revolutionary government in 1919. Horthy became a loyal ally of nazi Germany and Hungarian forces took part in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The Hungarian army suffered heavy casualties on the Eastern Front and in 1944 Horthy sought to withdraw from the war. Consequently he was overthrown by local fascists of the Arrow Cross Party. After their takeover the Arrow Cross requisitioned 60 Andrassy Street for use as a party headquarters with its own cells and torture chambers.

When the Red Army entered the Budapest in 1945 the Hungarian Communist Party's security section took over the former Arrow Cross premises in Andrassy Street. Normal policing collapsed in Hungary in the aftermath of defeat and the Hungarian party's security group - with the support of Soviet personnel - established itself as a semi-official force, spearheading the hunting down of Hungarian fascists and collaborators. When a Hungarian coalition government was formed in 1945 a communist became Minister of the Interior with control over the Hungarian police, including the security section in Andrassy Street. A year later the section gained official recognition as the State Security Department - in Hungarian the Allamvedelmi Osztaly (usually abbreviated to ATO), and although the name changed to the State Security Authority or Allamvedelmi Hatosag (AVH) in 1949, the old name stuck. The Hungarian security police in their smart, khaki uniforms with blue facings and blue-banded peaked caps were usually known as AVO men.

The AVO was largely the creation of Gabor Peter, whose real name was Benjamin Auspitz. He was born in 1911 of Jewish parents and became a tailor. He joined the banned Communist Party as a young man, attended training courses in Moscow and returned to Hungary to become head of the underground party's security organs. Peter was an intelligent man and a good organiser who spoke fluent German and Russian in addition to his native Magya tongue. With the help of Soviet advisers he was responsible for building up the AVO into a much-feared 'state within a state'. He recruited widely for the 'right' sort of people to join the ranks of the security police, which numbered 35,000 uniformed members at its peak plus several thousand plain-clothes staff and a wide network of informers. Under his command the AVO became an arm of the Communist Party, sometimes described in communist publications as 'the first of the Party'. AVO personnel were highly paid, well housed and enjoyed access to special shops and holiday resorts. Its recruits were trained by Soviet instructors to regard the 'class enemy' with the same level of hatred that SS men had been conditioned to regard Jews.

In appearance Gabor Peter was of medium height and stocky build, and sported a toothbrush moustache. He was by all accounts not a raving monster but a modest and well-mannered individual. Hannah Arendt's phrase 'the banality of evil' could be applied to Gabor Peter as aptly as she applied it to Adolf Eichmann. He was steadily promoted as the security police grew in size and power, until he reached the rank of general. There is no reason to doubt that he joined the Communist Party out of conviction, however the evidence clearly shows that he developed into a cynical careerist, prepared to do any dirty work in order to advance his career and so enjoy the fruits of power. In 1953 he was himself arrested when Stalin ordered a purge of 'Zionists', and the Hungarian Communist Party boss, Matya Rakosi, himself the son of a Jewish poultry merchant, was prepared to oblige by ordering the arrest of several Jewish communists. It was also politically convenient to blame the police chief for the AVO's excesses: a role later played by Beria in the Soviet Union. Gabor Peter's life was saved by the death of Stalin and the consequent change of line. He served several years in prison and was released during an amnesty, after which he worked as a librarian.

After the anti-communist uprising of 1956 the hated AVO was wound up as part of the Kadar's regime's milder line, offering the Hungarian people 'goulash communism'. The underground cells at 60 Andrassy Street were filled in and the above-ground rooms converted into offices. After the ending of communist rule in the 1990s the new government decided to turn 60 Andrassy Street into a museum covering the years of terror and it was intended that the refurbished building would also serve as a memorial to those who suffered and died within its walls.

No attempt has been made to transform the building into an exact replica of what it was like during the AVO years. The walls of the entrance hall are covered with photographs of the 5,000 victims who died in the building, and a Soviet T52 tank, used to suppress the 1956 uprising, 'stands guard' in the hallway. There are several rooms devoted to the history of the communist regime, including art and artefacts, such as posters, portraits and busts of Stalin and Rakosi. A courtroom has been reconstructed in another room and its walls have been papered with copies of forced confessions extracted by AVO interrogators. In the same room there is a monitor showing old newsreels of the show trials of Cardinal Mindszenty, Laszlo Rajk and Imre Nagy. Gabor Peter's office has been restored to its appearance during the years of power, and the cells, torture chambers and execution room have been rebuilt in the cellars of the building.

The museum was opened in 2002 and has become a major tourist attraction, but it is not for the squeamish. To be fair it is not like the medieval dungeons and black museums to be found on the tourist trail in Britain. The years of terror in Hungary are too recent for them to be treated lightly: the museum aims to instruct, not amuse. I emerged from the building pondering how communism, described by John Strachey as possessing 'the most glorious aspirations of any political movement in history' (The Strangled Cry, [New York: W. Sloane Associates], 1962, p41) should degenerate into a system underpinned by secret police, torture chambers, show trials and gulags.

Archie Potts