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 public-relations flop for Kadar, aroused widespread sympathy for tearful, blonde Ilona Toth. An embarrassed Communist woman judge brusquely sentenced Ilona, the army lieutenant and one other to death. The comparatively mild prison sentences handed down to Obersovszky and Gali were later reversed; both, together with a third defendant, were on appeal condemned to death.

The appeal trial brought a deluge of protests and pleas for clemency from world liberals and Marxists, including British Philosopher Bertrand Russell, Scientist Julian Huxley, Peru's President Manuel Prado, Hungarian Writer Paul Igno-tus, French ex-Fellow Traveler Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as from such Communists as Artist Pablo Picasso and Poet Louis Aragon (who was later outraged to learn that the capitalist press knew of his appeal). Seemingly impressed, the Kadar regime said last week that, "pending re-examination of the case," it had "suspended" the death sentences of Intellectuals Obersovszky and Gali. But three days later it showed its complete contempt for world opinion by hanging youthful (25) Student Toth and her three Freedom-Fighting comrades.

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