My thanks to William Barletta for this and all the B&W conversions in this small B&W sub-gallery.

I was fascinated with the entry to Memento Park and thought these passages from the park’s guidebook were quite illuminating:

“At the same time, [the architectural elements of the entry building] are used by the architect to symbolize communist ideology. By their sheer enormity, their power over everything, they emphasize the worthlessness of everything beneath them and the desire to be served by those under them.

“The enormous building with its imposing facades promises an incredible continuation, just like all those people who dreamed of the coming of a brighter future. However, with a glance behind the gate the trick is revealed: the façade is merely decoration, an enormous, fake Potemkin wall, which is supported from behind by posts and scaffolding.

“They [Marx, Engels and Lenin] greet the visitors as if they were intended to be the starting point of the time travel. But you cannot go through the main gate to start your journey. It is always closed. You have to find another solution: the golden rule of everyday communist life applies here too: next to every big door, there is a small window.”

A very long poem titled “One Sentence about Tyranny” by Gyula Illyés is written on the gate. It starts:

“Where tyranny exists
that tyranny exists
not only in the barrel
of the gun
not only in the cells
of a prison …”

One translation of the poem is at http://anidpls.multiply.com/journal/item/4?&show_interstitial=1&u=%2Fjournal%2Fitem