General Serovs Sentence GEBERAL SEROVS SENTENCE He was thin and small with stooped shoulders, and he never took off his sunglasses. He was called George Vadas and he was a lawyer. Ibolya had first engaged as my defense lawyer a former justice minister, a friend of ours who had lived in Moscow for several years. He was refused by the court on the grounds that he was not on the list of defenders accredited by the AVO. Another well-known jurist, a professor of law at the University of Budapest, was rejected for the same reason. A list of authorized defenders was pushed in front of me. I didnt recognize any of the names on it. Choose one anyway. One of the names had an address on a street where I had lived at one time. My finger stopped on his name. That was how Vadas became my defense lawyer. He came to see me one Tuesday morning, drenched from the snow. He didnt offer his hand. He looked at me scornfully and said without any transition: Arent you ashamed to have dirtied the good name of the armed forces by your criminal treachery? This was the tone he would maintain throughout our interview. I was above all curious to know what he anticipated for my case. He replied coldly: In your place, I wouldnt take any chances. Make your confession to the security organs and before the court. That is your task. The rest is up to justice. I still wanted to know whether, as my defender, he could help me in some way. Yes. By transmitting your confessions to the organs of justice. That is the greatest service that I can render to the working people, whose interest is far more important to me than that of a traitor. Through a special favor, I was able to ask my wife to try to rid us of this creep. She went to Vadass office with my father, who was full of misgivings. Ibolya, I beg you, be careful. Choose your words carefully. This man could hurt our Sandor. Ibolya knew exactly what measures the situation required. How much do you want to quit my husbands case? The man in the dark glasses was open-mouthed in surprise. But only for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders and said, Two thousand forints. That was the monthly salary of a qualified worker. My father was staggered. Ibolya didnt turn a hair. Very well. Here is your money. Write on a paper: I resign as defender of Kopacsi. Vadas felt it would be imprudent to sign such a paper. He made out a receipt to a non-existent name created from the first names of my daughter and me. We have kept the receipt to this day as an example of the morality of the Hungarian security service and its appendages. This adventure allowed us to find a new, sincere friend, a great jurist who would remain loyally at my side until the last moment of the trial. His name was Laszlo Bajor; under Rakosi, he had been public prosecutor for military affairs, which was why his name was on the AVOs approved list. But the revolution had shaken the man to his foundations. When the new Kadar regime wanted to reinstate him in his previous job, he had replied, The rest of my life will be consecrated to defending the innocent. Later, thanks to the indiscretion of the president of the tribunal assigned to our case, word got out that I had no one to defend my case. When Bajor heard of it, he immediately went to see Ibolya. I admire your husband. Ask him to place his confidence in me and I will do the impossible to save him. I do not ask for any fee. If necessary, I can even help your family financially. Bajor was an excellent man, a moral man, and a fine counselor. But no defender would have been good enough to save a head that Serov had sworn to chop. It would take powers greater than his to save my life. In Hungarian prisons, unlike those in Western countries, the inmates dont play ping-pong, they dont watch television or get newspapers, and they dont have the chance to exchange informa¬tion and marijuana with each other. The prisoner is alone in a cement cell whose only decor is a light bulb that burns day and night above the steel door. Ordinarily, the guards are members of the AVO. Watched and informed on by each other, they testify against the inmates with a patriotic hostility, calling them fascists and punching and kick¬ing them in the corridors. At least twice a day, the guards had the job of bringing us to see the AVOs investigating officer. This was a macabre ceremony. Fo Street prison in Budapest, like the famous prisons of Moscow, was equipped with optical and acoustic signals designed to prevent any chance meetings in the corridors. To keep thousands of innocent people in a state of total ignorance while their cases were under investigation, the kilometers of corridors were equipped with recesses and sentry boxes so that, signaled by warning lights and sinister beeps, a prisoner could be hidden in one of them in case another prisoner approached. The prisoners were thus kept entirely in the dark, without any chance of obtaining information, at the mercy of the investigators who could tell them any lie whatever and were happy to do so. In the midst of this artificial solitude, I began to prepare my defense. My plan was simply to proclaim before the world the truth about the events of 1956 in Budapest. As one of the new leaders of the Hungarian party, it was my duty to provide an analysis of this historic period — including the deadly role played by Rakosi, whose tyranny was the direct cause of the explosion — and to examine the disastrous tactics of the Soviet authorities who, rejec¬ting any political solution, chose instead a massive, brutal, imperialistic intervention by their armed forces. I believed that the members of Kadars government would listen to my words with respect, and I even hoped that they would pay heed to what I said in forming their own policies. My voice would come to them from the depths of prison through the intermediary of a trial. Before dying, I would have given cause for reflection to the new leaders of a country completely obsessed by the presence of the Russians. I was naive. But, without information, alone in a cell, one can only build castles in the air. Fortunately, even Fo Street was not totally impregnable and my eyes were soon opened to reality. Psst. Psst. One of the guards called me familiarly through the peephole. He whispered in Hungarian, Colonel. What was going on? The key turned in the lock of the wicket, and a face that I knew appeared in the metal rectangle. It was the policeman with the scarred face, the sergeant who had arrived at police headquarters during the revolu¬tion and had accompanied me, along with my chauffeur, George, into the crowd assembled in front of police headquarters. Colonel. Ive been transferred here as a guard. As soon as the officer buggers off, Ill be back to see you. It wasnt only cigarettes and extra food that I would get, thanks to this man - lets call him Ferenc. I would also get news, and that was what I needed most of all. In March 1957, about five months after my arrest, the Russians replaced the Russian guards and examining officers with staff recruited from among former Hungarian AVO personnel. Because they couldnt get enough ex-security police, they also hired Greek refugees who had been in Hungary since the end of the Greek civil war (their qualifications included not being able to speak enough Hungarian to get friendly with the prisoners), and several ordinary policemen like my friend Ferenc. The top management of Fo Street, however, remained in the hands of the Russians, headed by Colonel Shumilin, who held the post of general counselor for counterrevolutionary affairs. I learned that my wife was earning her living selling pretzels in front of the elephant enclosure at the Budapest Zoo. Her position was better than those of the wives and children of the members of the Nagy government who had sought refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy. Fifteen high officials of the Nagy government along with their wives and some twenty-seven children had been transported to Romania. Included in the group were celebrated Marxist philosopher George Lukacs and Julia Rajk, the widow of the martyred Laszlo Rajk. The families of the accused werent allowed to return until six weeks after the trial. Their abduction was an operation worthy of Al Capone. After fifteen days of negotiations through the mediation of the Yugoslav ambassador and correspondence with Tito, the new Hungarian government guaranteed immunity from prosecution to Nagy and his friends if they would return to their residences in Budapest. The agreement was approved by Janos Kadar in a handwritten letter to Titos Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nagy accepted. Munnich, once again installed as Minister of the Interior, sent a bus to transport them from the embassy to their homes. But as soon as the government leaders and their families were in the vehicle, it was surrounded by Soviet half-tracks. Several Russian security officers entered the bus. The two Yugoslav diplomats assigned to assure that the departure of the refugees went smoothly were brutally pushed aside. Escorted by the half-tracks, the bus sped to the Soviet general headquarters. The occupants refused to leave the bus. They were pulled out by force, the children shrieking in fear, the women screaming. That same night, they were piled onto a plane. The next day a communiqué was published in the press to the effect that Imre Nagy and his friends have left at their request for the Popular Republic of Romania. The truth rapidly became public knowledge. A delegation from the National Workers Council, a sort of Hungarian soviet sprung from the revolution, demanded an explanation from Kadar. On November 26, he replied on Radio Budapest: We promised that the behavior of Imre Nagy and his friends would not be subject to legal proceedings. We will keep that promise. We do not consider their departure as permanent. But, in our opinion, it is to the advantage of Imre Nagy and his associates and their families to leave Hungary for a certain period of time. Several days later, at the plenary session of the United Nations on December 3, the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs declared: The Romanian government assures that Prime Minister Imre Nagy and his group will enjoy the full benefit of the right of political exile. The Romanian government will observe the international rules regarding this right. The workers council reacted firmly to the kidnapping of Nagy. It ordered the factories to stop production until Nagy returned and the Russians departed. It was a general strike: all work stopped, and offices, schools, and service industries were closed right across the country. The workers council was the last bastion of opposition still operative in Hungary. Because it was an elected body, with represen¬tatives from each major workplace, it had great credibility, and both the regime and the Russians had to take it seriously. Despite the strike, the Russians still hoped to use this council to control the fractious workers. They had distributed travel passes to its members (for ordinary citizens, travel within the country was still restricted) as well as authorizations to carry arms. They even appointed their own delegate, a colonel, who took part regularly in the councils deliberations, which were also sometimes attended by Kadar and senior Soviet officials. On November 23, a month after the beginning of the insurrection, many senior Soviets had shown up at the councils meeting. They wanted to know what orders the delegates had given to the population to mark the occasion. (Their own delegate had been absent from a previous meeting when the matter had been discussed.) A few minutes before 2:00 p.m., Sandor Racz, president of the council, stood up to speak. He was only twenty-three and a man of little education, but he was such a remarkable orator that he had been elected to head the council. Comrade interpreters, Racz said. You may assure the Soviet officers present here that the population of Budapest is not about to resume the insurrection. But they will see something that they have never seen before. From this moment, and for the next hour, you will not see a living soul in the streets of Budapest. This is our way of commemorating those who fell in the battle for liberty. As for us, we are going to observe a minute of silence. Everybody rose and sang the Hungarian national anthem. The Soviet officers also took part in this salute to the martyrs of the insurrection. For an hour, the streets of Budapest were as empty as the streets of a city might be in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Abruptly, the Russians put an end to this game. Early in December, the council president was summoned to the Soviet general headquarters. Serov was waiting for him. Its finished. We dont want to hear any more phony demands from you and you are not going to continue the strike. Consider yourself fortunate that I allow you to walk out of this room. On December 9, the workers council was outlawed and its leaders, who had been chosen by secret ballot by workers in every factory and business in Hungary, were arrested. Meanwhile, communiqués were published assuring the public that Imre Nagy and his group were enjoying the hospitality of the Romanian government in an excellent atmosphere marked by mutual understanding. The Soviets decided it was time to clear up this ambiguous situation. They held a conference in Budapest of the Soviet, Romanian, Czech, Bulgarian, and Hungarian parties. The Soviet party was represented by Khrushchev and Malenkov. The conference lasted for four days and, on January 6, two days after it had closed, Kadar had the following communiqué published: Imre Nagy and his government opened, by treachery, the road to a fascist counter-revolution in Hungary. Several days later, Chou En-lai, the Chinese prime minister, arrived in Budapest. Immediately, the Kadar government issued a second communiqué in which Nagy was branded a renegade and henchman of Western imperialism. On January 18, Chou left Hungary. On January 19, during the night, 2,000 people were arrested, including workers leaders, writers, and highly regarded members of the Communist opposition. That same night, death sentences were carried out in the courtyard at Fo Street against some Hungarian captives, including children as young as twelve. Total terror reigned in Budapest. The Soviet authorities could breathe more easily. They also made a clean sweep among their own personnel. My friend Ferenc told me of horrendous butchery involving Soviet soldiers and officers at the Budapest central prison. Several hundred Russian combatants were confined in that prison. For the Hungarian common criminals who shared the prison with the Russians, it was paradise on earth: for a package of cigarettes, they could get a gold case, a gold ring, or a handful of rubles from the Russian inmates. The unfortunate Russians knew that they wouldnt need their valuable objects much longer. Within forty-eight hours, they were all machine-gunned to death in the courtyard of the old prison. This was a common scene in the Soviet Army: after a foreign campaign, for reasons difficult to define, the political section of the army imprisoned and often killed a goodly number of conscripts who had witnessed scenes they couldnt guarantee to forget. I learned also of the tragic end in northern Hungary of several Soviet officers who commanded a column of tanks. Near the great steelworks on the road to Lillafured, the column was heading toward an area firmly in the control of the insurgents. On November 4, the women and children of the workers of Alsohamor and Felsohamor lay down on the mountain road. The Soviet commander stopped his tank column and told the women and children to move. They refused. After considering the alternatives, the officer chose to retreat. Two days later, he and his deputies were executed in the courtyard of the barracks in the town of Miskolc for the crime of failing to crush women and children under their caterpillar tracks. Where are the streets named after the women and children of Alsohamor and Felsohamor in Hungary and in the world? When will we learn the names of those officers martyred for having spared innocent lives? Such was the news I received from Ferenc. After hearing it, I couldnt sleep for weeks. I had a new investigating officer, a Hungarian AVO major named Takacs. One day a civilian dropped in on us, a man with a personality as dry as a smoked herring. Wearing dark glasses like most of the KGB officers, he gave me a scornful look without speaking. Who was this character? He moved close to Takacs and whispered something in his ear. Da, da, yes, yes, its definitely him, my investigator replied in a low voice. So the unknown was a Russian. And I was what for him? The chief assassin? The henchman of international imperialism? Neither, as I would learn later. Soon after this puzzling interview, a remarkable construction project began in the prison. The halls on the third floor were divided in half by partitions from floor to ceiling: kilometers of partitions were erected in the corridors, on the staircases, and in certain offices and rooms. The noise of hammers and saws continued day and night. Cells were emptied and we were regrouped. Sound and light signals were installed. What we lived through in that prison was just like what Kafka described in his account of an imaginary trial in another time. I was alone in my cell for a year. My friend Ferenc had been transferred. My one contact with the outside world was the visit, in the presence of a heavily armed guard, of Bajor, my defense lawyer. For a year, I had been forbidden to see him. When we finally met, his seriousness and the nobility of his face inspired me immediately. He shook my hand, while bowing very low. It was the first time a man had bowed before me and I quickly understood why. I was no longer one of them. For those on the outside, I belonged to another world, that of the ghosts, perhaps of the martyrs. We sat down face to face in the ill-furnished room that was used for interviews between prisoners and their lawyers. Bajor spread out his files in front of him. I wasnt allowed to look at these papers, but my attention was caught by one of Bajors gestures. On several occasions, he placed eight of his fingers clearly in view, with the two thumbs bent out of sight, on the cover of the file, all the while looking at me insistently. Obviously, the room was stuffed with microphones. The guard was an AVO non-commissioned officer, specially assigned to observe even the slightest gesture that passed between us and to listen carefully to everything we said. What are you wriggling about for there? he asked belligerently. Bajor eyed him with a superior air. Nobody is wriggling about. I am here to defend one of the principal accused in a big, big case and….” The security man gave a start and interrupted the lawyer: Shut up. I forbid you to speak. Bajor turned toward him. If I understand you, you take it upon yourself to interrupt the proceedings? The guard was furious: I forbid you to pronounce, to pronounce the.... The what? The adjectives big, large? Is that what you dont like? The noise of the carpentry resumed outside the room, and in my little brain a light went on. In Hungarian, the word nagy, the surname of Prime Minister Nagy, means big: Big, Grand and Co. The guard screamed: The meeting is adjourned. Coldly, Bajor rose. The responsibility is entirely yours. His eight fingers well spread out, thumbs bent back, he reached out his hands to gather up the documents. The guards face was covered with sweat. Continue. But if I see the slightest suspicious gesture, if I hear the slightest out-of-place word, you will pay dearly. I no longer needed any explanation. Now I understood everything. Bajor was predicting eight accused. We were now looking at a much different trial from the one that had been previously planned for Maleter and me: instead of two death sentences, the Russians now planned a series. All the construction in the corridors and in the cells…. They had some distinguished guests, more important than us two. Big, large, the big case: Nagy. They had brought Nagy back from Romania and they wanted to kill him at the same time as us. I scratched my hair with my eight fingers, thumbs conspicuously bent back. Bajor closed and opened his eyelids. The AVO man screamed: What is that? Bajor confined himself to looking contemptuously at the man. He continued to speak in an even tone of my case, the charges against me, the grounds for the defense. I barely heard. I was astounded by the news I had just been given. So they had dared! After repeated assurances and safe-conducts, and multiple promises of immunity, the Russians had reneged: they had arrested the Hungarian prime minister, a man of sixty-one years, a Communist for forty of them. He would pass his last days hidden behind the newly erected partitions and die probably behind other barriers that would smother the sound! So? What is your response? Solitary confinement reduces the brains ability to process new information. I hadnt heard Bajors question. He repeated his proposition: Your wife and I, we are going to do everything to improve your lot, but its necessary that you be in agreement. The AVO man came closer to us. Whats this all about? What has the defendants wife got to do with his defense? Now I understood what Bajor was trying to get across to me. Perhaps I would live to see my wife again after all. So long as I was to be part of a two-person trial, with Maleter as my co-accused, the death sentence was assured. But on a slate of eight accused, we would be ranked according to our importance; perhaps not all of us would be condemned to death. I felt as if I were suffocating, as if the rope were tightening around my neck. The animal reflex told me that I had to get free. I had a horrible vision in which I saw the dignified form of Nagy strangling on the gallows. I heard him cry out: Long live free and socialist Hungary - the same phrase I was going to shout myself in front of the firing squad. I saw the young Losonczy, so fragile (he had contracted tuberculosis in Rakosis torture chambers and had had thoracic surgery a few months ago); I saw the great Maleter, smiling bravely, falling before the bullets; I saw myself on the ground, eagerly awaiting the coup de grace from the revolver of this Boy Scout who was leaning over us at this very moment. I began to scream: Counselor Bajor. Do something. For the love of God, do something! In a movement of impotent anger, the AVO man indicated the end of the interview.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 17:48:25 +0000