On 1 January 1950, after a decision taken by the Council of Hungarian ministers, the 'Bureau for State Security' was established. This new department of state police was given independence from all the ministries, and became a special medium of the Party. During the same period, at the foot of the Matra massif, a camp was opened at Recsk. It remained in use until the winter of 1953.
The personal accounts of former prisoners, guards, investigators, and political commissioners enabled Géza Böszörmenyi and Livia Gyarmathy to reconstruct a clear picture of the living conditions in this Hungarian concentration camp. The film attempts to show, behind these 'tableaux' of mutilated existence, the rapid corrosion of human principles under political pressure.
The Recsk camp represents an indelible traumatism in the collective memory of the Hungarian people. The co-director of this film, Géza Böszörmenyi was a prisoner at Recsk, himself. He, for one, will never forget it.
