Greymouth Evening Star. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1949. The Budapest Trials

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 September 1949, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1949. The Budapest Trials

COME strange things have happened ' behind the Iron. Curtain, but surely nothing stranger .than the Budapest spectacle of meh, who had risen to the pinnacle of the Communist hierarchy in their country, being suddenly revealed as “Fascist spies. This is what has happened in the trial of Laszlo Rajk, former Htmgarian Minister of the Interior and Minister-'for Foreign Affairs, and others, including General George Palffy, until recently Chief of Staff of the Hungarian Army. After basking for years in the sunshine of Communist adulation, these prisoners at the bar are dragged down into the dust of ignominy. Some of them are to pay the extreme penalty for their alleged crimes. The contrast between today and yesterday is, to say the least, curious. For example, Mr Rajk, according to the indictment read at the Budapest trial, was a Hungarian political spy from 1931 to the end of the war, and his behaviour during the Spanish Civil War was such as to earn his exclusion from the Communist Party. Yet in a speech on the Nagy “conspiracy” to a meeting on January 18, 1947, Mr Rakosi, the present Hungarian VieePreniier and the most powerful Communist in Hungary today, delivered a eulogy of Mr Rajk in the following terms: Let me say a few words of appreciation of the activities of Comrade Laszlo Ra]k, Minister of the Interior, who has been made the object of many attacks incurred as a result of the undermining work of the conspirators. It was not by chance that the furv of reaction, organised underground, concentrated particularly on his person. They knew that they stood in opposition to a man who had come from the Hungarian working people, who was a couragSus and intr/pid fighter in the Hungrjan workers’ movement, who . fou S h t tne Spanish revolution, who with death-defy-ing courage suffered in 1944 at Kohida and who was forged like steel in the uncompromising battle against Horthy reaction. We trust Comrade Rajk and the democratic police to carry out by thorough and good work the consolidation and defence of The contrast is extraordinary. day Mr Rajk was eulogised in the highest terms - he held one of the most important nosts iB the Communist Government, having reached there only after the most searching tests in the fires of anarchy and revolution. Today he is classed as a common criminal; he is accused of being' a “Fascist” spy, which, according to the Communists, is the lowest form of humai life. And what, perhaps, is worse m the eves of the Communists, he is said to have been spying for America. An explanation of the contrast is perhaps not far to seek. .Behind the mounting of the spectacular .Budapest trial can be seen the finger oi. the Cominform and in the dock stands the phantom of Marshal Tito, of Jugoslavia.