If you know a lot about Hungary and Budapest, you might have heard about Sziklakórház, ‘Hospital in the Rock’ – a secret underground facility, opened in 1944 in one of the natural caves under Budapest. The hospital was also a safe place during the 1956, when Soviet troops suppressed the Hungarian uprising against the country’s communist regime, so it’s not a wonder that wounded Hungarians didn’t want to leave the facility.

Now in a recent article, BBC presents this place and the story of Erzsébet Seibriger and her family. Erzsébet was a little girl, only 3 years old in 1956, when her surgeon father treated Hungarian and Russian soldiers in the ‘Hospital in the Rock’. After the rebellion, Doctor Seibriger was not jailed, but he lost his medical licence. He died in 1977, but Erzsébet (already a grandmother with six grandchildren) still lives near the facility.

“Even though the government declassified the hospital’s existence in 2002, and this year it will celebrate its 10th year as the Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker Museum, the space remains frozen in time, full of mysteries and untold stories. The Seibrigers’ story is one of only hundreds that have emerged since the museum opened” – BBC writes.

If you will spend a couple of days in Budapest in the near-future, and want to travel back to the past, the ‘Hospital in the Rock’ – with its lifelike wax figures and still working equipment – is really worth visiting.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170421-budapests-secret-underground-hospital