Excerpt: A Place out of Time

I did visit the museum a few days later. Apparently the government thought using an ornate palace to show the evils of monarchy and capitalism was a good idea. But Soviet attitudes cast an interesting light on everything.
A wax sculpture of King Janos showed him anachronistically in a bra and panties defending the Fortress from the Austrians.
Karol III, the first ruler of the fully-independent country was shown in bed with Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George, all apparently nude, but covered with currency.
And the still-living Princess Stefani was shown dressed as a prostitute while a German tank drove through Old Town (the tank was actually a Soviet T-34 bearing a swastika, something I found a bit ironic).
The museum had nothing to do with either history or exploitation of the masses. It looked to me like the efforts of a rabid, if short-sighted, Marxist-Leninist college student mocking everyone of whom he disapproved.
My few weeks in Niagara Falls prepared me for the basement. The Chamber of Horrors. Here was a collection of authentic (or so the sign claimed) torture devices used by the North Moravian royals to suppress the masses.
All the wax figures strapped into these devices were either of very attractive young women or of children. A royal, presiding imperiously over the carnage, and a priest, nodding in approval, were always a part of the scene.
One exhibit did jar me, but for reasons having nothing to do with the event portrayed. A mid-nineteenth century King was holding by the hair the head of a child, guillotined for stealing the King's diamond cufflinks. I turned my head, and saw that same curly-headed child eating popcorn from a cardboard carton.
He looked at me, saw the terror on my face, laughed, and ran away.
An usher noticed and approached. "A new exhibit," he said. "The locals used as models often will come here to disturb the unwary."
"Your people have a very strange sense of humor," I replied.
He nodded his head and returned to his post.