HUNGARY: By His Own Hand

In Budapest, “Andrassy ut 60,” an address usually spoken in whispers, means what “Lyubyanka” means in Moscow: it is th.e headquarters of the Communist secret police. Boss of Andrassy ut 60 was Peter Gabor, onetime tailor’s apprentice, who became a journeyman Communist and got his final training in Moscow. Gabor reached the zenith of his career at the trial of Cardinal Mindszenty, where he produced evidence supposedly showing the cardinal’s connection with U.S. diplomats. Under Gabor’s regime, Andrassy ut 60, whose windowboxes were always bright with geraniums, became dreaded for merciless beatings and torture of prisoners.

When Communist ex-Minister of the Interior Laszlo Rajk went to prison last June as an “imperialist agent” and Titoist-suspect (TIME, June 27), there were rumors that his pal, the police chief, would soon share his fate. Last week Tito’s paper Borba (which has shown before that it has a good pipeline into Hungary) reported that Hangman Gabor had killed himself in a Budapest prison.