My grandad was a part of this government though! :
(from the same testimony)

“Then a young man, he returned to Hungary and was one of the
assistant peoples commissars under the Communist regime of Bela
Kun, which lasted but for a short period of time.”

Here is the concentration camp I just mentioned, discussed by your grandfather:

“At this point when the International Brigade was dissolved and
all its members had to flee through France, the Americans came back
to America, the others who could not go back to their homelands, like
the Hungarians, were placed in detention camps.

Mr. McNamara. In France.

Mr. Santo. In France. It was testified that agents of the
Deuxieme Bureau came into the camp to talk to Rajk, and Rajk alone.
There were witnesses who testified that Rajk was the only one who had
permission to leave the camp anytime he wanted to, to go into the city
from this particular detention camp.”

My grandad has plenty of notes, letters, -writings from the period, including some about the camp. I am stimulated to want to read them and connect some dots.

I might try and scan it and maybe later translate parts (it is yellowing and close to falling apart…I’d need a way to preserve it better).

Democracy in our granfathers’ time as now needs to be constantly built and defended or it will only fall to those who don’t want to share power with everyone else.

I’ll let you know if I get more of the conversation with Rajk digitalised.

I’ll try and read your grandad’s testimony too. Right now, I’m off to bed.

N.

Interesting that he reported die hard party loyalists sacrificing them for the party. I imagine, as you said, that the trials were both a way to get rid of inconvenient people as well as a place where loyalists showed their dedication (in a most extreme way…). If you read my grandfather’s testimony, it mentions the trial of László Rajk which I link to above as well, which I’m pretty sure was about getting rid of someone inconvenient.

My own take away from reading about all this is that despite the failings of American Democracy, we truly have a better system that what existed, and I’m very thankful for that.

My grandad was a judge in the Hungarian showtrials. He was also Jewish. He also left the country when he had a clear idea of how the trials were run, and left to live in France where he denounced that system in a book he wrote.

(Volontaires pour la potence; technique des procès Soviétiques by Sandor Garay, Editions Berger-Levrault)

I can unproudly announce I haven’t yet read his book! I know roughly, and from a newspaper interview that he described among those selected for trial as people who were particularly close to the pro-Soviet government party, and who would go as far as sacrificing themselves to contribute to the propaganda.(whence the title of his book: “Volunteers to the scaffold”). Which differs a little from your description. Perhaps there was some of both.

I am terribly ignorant about this, but I am even more ignorant about other things.

Best of luck,

Nicholas.