HUNGARY: Contempt & Clemency

For one moment last April, the Kadar regime let the world glimpse its version of justice. In the course of secretly trying some 5,000 "criminals" (at least 113 of whom have been sentenced to death), Kadar decided to hold an open trial of eleven young Freedom Fighters. For his winning examples he chose Medical Student Ilona Toth, Editor Gyula Obersovszky, Playwright Jozsef Gali and eight others including an army lieutenant, charged them with having murdered an AVH man who had discovered that they were putting out a mimeographed revolutionary sheet called We Live! (TIME, April 22).

The trial was a...

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