The persecution of the Church under communist dictatorship (1945–1990)

The main aim and message of the exhibition is to show how the Church-related victims of the era survived the ordeal, how they managed to cope with the well-constructed “fight” against them, and to show that they were human beings, different people, who had different attitudes towards the dictatorship’s anti-church prohibitions. The approach is an ecumenical kind of presentation, from a subjective point of view, as if reading the story from the diary of a surviving church person.

The structure of the exhibition progresses from an introductory objective transfer of knowledge to the presentation of less and less, more subjective stories that can be embraced, until the transfer of knowledge already effaces, leaving only “talkative” material memories, faces, and implied feelings. The introductory historical overview is followed by three rooms that recall the steps of well-constructed propaganda, observation, and then the setting up of show trials. The following three spaces already provide an intimate opening and retrospection, commemorating the victims and the confessions, experiencing a closed and hidden faith-based world lived in various forms of punishment. At the very end of the exhibition, visitors may experience the release and escape from darkness and confinement and come out with the victims’ grasp.