Gresham Palace

Gresham Palace was built by the London-based Gresham Life Assurance Company. At the exit from the Chain Bridge, the company acquired an office, an expensive apartment building, and a covered shopping arcade all at once. Apartments of eight to ten rooms were rented out on the upper floors, while shops and cafés operated below. The name came with the owner: Thomas Gresham was a court merchant to Elizabeth the First and the founder of London’s Royal Exchange. The insurers chose him as their patron and then transferred his surname to the Budapest facade.

The commercial premises soon became more important than the insurance office. In the basement beneath the café on the Mérleg Street side, László Békefi opened the writers’ Pódium Cabaret in nineteen thirty-six. He was its proprietor, writer, and compère: he wrote topical texts and earned his living from evening performances. The small stage and tables pressed close against it made it possible to speak to the audience through hints, pauses, and unfinished phrases, which were harder for the censor to present as a direct violation.

The most famous program was Show Your Papers! The Second Jewish Law restricted access to professions on the basis of origin, so people had to gather documents about their ancestors and prove their own ancestry to officials. Békefi turned this procedure into satire. The program was performed more than four hundred times. For audiences, going to Pódium Cabaret became a way to publicly support someone who continued to mock Nazi influence when open criticism was becoming dangerous.

In nineteen forty-one, the Hungarian Theatre Chamber banned Békefi from appearing on stage. He lost both his platform and the profession from which he made his living. By that time, the compère was in contact with Basil Davidson, a representative of the British Special Operations Executive. Later, a Hungarian military court accused Békefi of sending a courier with secret messages to Davidson in Turkey. Békefi acknowledged the acquaintances and the money given to a woman for the journey, but denied passing on assignments. The court sentenced him to twelve years in prison. After several prisons, he was sent to Dachau. He survived, but after the war he never returned to Hungary.

Today, behind the restored Peacock Gate is the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace Budapest. Pódium Cabaret has disappeared: it occupied the basement beneath the former Gresham Café. The building retains the name of the English merchant, but the stage on which Békefi earned his living and from which he was forbidden to speak is no longer here.