Trial of László Rajk
| László Rajk | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Minister of the Interior of Hungary | |
|
In office 20 March 1946 – 5 August 1948 |
|
| Preceded by | Imre Nagy |
| Succeeded by | János Kádár |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
8 March 1909 Székelyudvarhely, Udvarhely County, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania) |
| Died | 15 October 1949 (aged 40) Budapest, People's Republic of Hungary |
| Political party | KMP, MKP, MDP |
| Spouse(s) | Júlia Földi |
| Children | László |
| Profession | politician |
László Rajk (March 8, 1909 – October 15, 1949) was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power (for example, organizing the State Protection Authority (ÁVH)), but he eventually fell victim to Mátyás Rákosi's show trials.
Born in Székelyudvarhely, the ninth of eleven children in a family of Transylvanian Saxons, his ties to Communism began at an early age when he became a member of the Communist Party of Hungary (KMP).
Later he was expelled from his university for his political ideas and would become a building worker, until 1936 when he joined the Popular Front in the Spanish Civil War. He became commissar of the Rakosi Battalion of XIII International Brigade. After the collapse of Republican Spain, he was interned in France until 1941, when he was finally able to return to Hungary, where he became Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee, an underground Communist movement.
In December 1944 he was arrested by a detachment of the Arrow Cross Party. He was to be executed, and was transported to the prison of Sopronkőhida, then into Germany; but the intercession of his elder brother, Endre, a fascist under-secretary saved his life. László Rajk was released on May 13, 1945.
He went home to Hungary and took part in party politics. He became a member of all the leader corporations of the party (MKP) and the Extemporal Parliament. Rajk was a member of the High National Council from December 7, 1945 to February 2, 1946. On March 20, 1946 he was appointed to be the minister of the Interior. In this post he organized the Hungarian Communist Party's private army and secret police (an organization analogous to the KGB, Securitate, Stasi and so on), the ÁVH (originally AVO), and he became directly responsible for this. Under the cover of "struggle against fascism and reaction" and "defence of the power of proletariat", he prohibited and liquidated several religious, nationalist, and maverick establishments and groups (the number of these was about 1,500), and set up the first show trials.
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