168 Óra. Political weekly,
Year XVI. issue 30. (29th June, 2004.)
BLOOD JUDGES AND THOSE WHO
REFUSED
The Kádár regime reacted to
the revolution of 1956 with a series of death sentences. Many who refused to
participate in the retributions left the judiciary. But there was another form
of reaction. It was forty-five years ago that Tibor Vágó, who remained
on the Supreme Court until the democratic change, sentenced to death Péter
Mansfeld – nine days after Mr Mansfeld turned eighteen. Ferenc Vida – who heard
Imre Nagy's trial – survived the rehabilitation of the martyred Prime Minister
in the Kútvölgyi Hospital. The most active of the blood judges was János
Borbély, who alone sentenced sixty-two people to death. What course did
Hungary's criminal judges adopt after 1956? by KURCZ Béla.
Minister for Justice Péter Bárándy appointed a six-strong committee last spring. The committee was set up to explore the damages suffered by Hungary's legal establishment over the past decades. Judges, judges' secretaries, notaries, solicitors, prosecutors, prosecutors' secretaries and other officials of the judiciary faced numerous unfair practices from 1945. Decrees were used to strip them of their positions, to meet out a large variety of punishments on them.
“Isn't it too late,” we asked Professor Tibor Zinner who heads the committee, and also acts as Chief of Staff of the Supreme Court.
Mr Zinner said forcing the Hungarian judiciary to face its past cannot wait any longer. By the time the revolution broke out, 1,100 or 70 per cent of all judges were removed from office.
There were some who refused to deliver verdicts as dictated by the Party, or perhaps refused to work as criminal rather than civil judges. Or they did not want to “enter” the “sentencing competition” launched at the Hungarian Workers' Party's 2nd Congress. There were some, who faced criminal charges, because the political leadership decided that some of their earlier verdicts were not based on the laws of the land. Of the judges involved in the 1932 case of Sallai and Fürst, only the chair Dr Géza Töreky escaped criminal charges (he emigrated in early '45), all members of the judges' panel and the prosecutor in the case were sentenced to imprisonment. The series of retributions were not yet over, but extended from adminstrative procedures to certification procedures, blacklisting, relocations and forced retirements.
“Judges did not have it easy after 1956, either,” Mr Zinner said.
A separate investigation is needed to determine how many solicitors were removed from the chamber in the course of the revision launched after a Party decree of December 1957. It is known that 524 people were fired from the Justice Ministry – including half of the judges sitting on the Supreme Court – because they refused to participate in the retributions, or refused to swear a military oath and could not continue working for not being military judges. But there are horrifying examples as well. “Big names” in the blood judge profession. There were some who passed 62 Court of Appeals and 3 first degree death sentences.
Mr Zinner says everyone is entitled to their personal rights. Yet he lets it drop: if in a society some are point out as “counterrevolutionaries”, then after October 1989, after the first Act of Nullification, it suddenly emerges that they were innocent, those who passed sentence cannot be left unnamed. Although they acted legally under the effective laws of the time. It is a different matter what “extracurricular” things a judge did, Mr Zinner said. You did not have to conform. There were some, who refused.
After 1989 the public learned that Imre Nagy and his associates with sentenced to death by Ferenc Vida. Vida was responsible for several other sinister sentences. Similarly notorious were János Borbély, Ferenc Ledényi (the trial of Colonel János Mecséri and associates. Eleven Court of Appeals death sentences), József Mecsér, Zoltán Radó, János Szimler, Gusztáv Tutsek (11 death sentences in the trial of János Futó and associates) and Tibor Vágó. What did they get in exchange? Did they excel at their work, or was the leadership not without gratitude?
“The Institute of '56 made a credible investigation of the cases where death sentences were passed down. An album has been compiled showing the names of the prosecutor and judge and the composition of the council. Just like then, when the revolutionaries were humiliated, now – sine ira et studio – a list has been put together of the chair of the council of judges in the different cases.
It is peculiar that the leadership awarded few prizes to the blood judges. They were not given great honours, they did not spend the summer in Balatonaliga (the government's summer resort). But in terms of their position, they became dominant members of the judiciary. Towards the end of their lives many of them – including Judge Vida – were placed in the Party's own old peoples' home. By the way, he spent some time before the Imre Nagy trial in the Chrimea. This is known from surviving holiday documents found at the Supreme Court.
Mr Zinner noted a strange circumstance surrounding judges who played a role in the illegal trials of the period preceding 1956, and who were expelled from the judiciary after 1953. At the end of 1956, and in early 1957 they were lured back. Let them work, there is a job they have to do. And those of them who were still active at the time of the Party Resolution of August, 1962 were sent to early retirement in a simplified procedure. They received a raised pension – of HUF 5,000-6,000 – in exchange for their loyalty. “They were paid” to keep their mouths shut. The raised pension was not subject to honour. A lift of those receiving special pensions was discovered by Mr Zinner in 1989-90 at the time when he headed a government commission.
How long were the likes of Judge Vida allowed to practice their profession? Mr Zinner says roughly until their 70th birthdays. By the eighties their ranks were thinner. No judge remained on the Supreme Court who had acted in the show trials of the Rákosi period. But it is hard to forget, that it is forty-five years ago that Tibor Vágó passed a sentence of death in trial of Péter Mansfeld on 19th March, 1959, nine days after Mr Mansfeld's eighteenth birthday. His fate was sealed by a strange piece of law, under which perpetrators over 16 could be sentenced to death.
Of the chief judges of '56, several stayed around until '89. All of them resigned, of their own accord, before Imre Nagy's rehabilitation order was passed on the day of Kádár's death.
There were military judges on the Supreme Court – Judge Ferenc Ledényi – who passed down 28 death sentences. Of these he sent 26 people to death in the Court of Appeals. Two of them were sent to the gallows in a first degree case, thus they first stood trial on the Supreme Court. (József Dudás, uncle Szabó.) Of the civilian criminal judges János Borbély was first: he sentenced 62 people to death in the Court of Appeals, he sentenced three people to death in first degree cases. György Sömjén sent 14 '56 revolutionaries to their deaths, Ferenc Vida sentenced 20 revolutionaries to death. Tibor Vágó passed nine death sentences, Zoltán Radó and László Molnár sentenced eight people to death each.
Mr Zinner gave account of a single case where the writ of charges already included the sentences that would be passed by the judge, but that was backin 1948. The National Archives guards a copy of the Party's decree on what sentences should be passed by the People's Courts National Council, acting as Court of Appeals, in the trial of Cardinal Mindszenty and associates. A 31st December, 1957 Party decree entitled On Certain Issues of Our Punitive Policy was sufficient. This made it clear what sentences were expected in the cases of a Workers' Committee Chairman, a “counterrevolutionary” or a leader of a militant group. The document set down the sentence threshold. The rest was left to the imagination of the judges.
There were several strange cases, where the first, second and third defendants got off with a few years in prison, but the tenth defendant ended up on the gallows. Mr Zinner says this depended on how the defendants behaved at the trial. A film was made on the Mansfeld case with the cooperation of Judges György Hintsch and Dr István Kónya – who now heads the Criminal Law College of the Supreme Court. Tibor Vágó said in 1985, after delivering a lecture at the Supreme Court's open day, that the sentence was a result of Mr Mansfeld's hostile behaviour during the trial (this was confirmed by the degence attorney Dr Tibor Gárgyán). “Excuse me, but if the four people's judges say death without batting an eyelid, then I will say no?” Judge Vágó said.
The first Court Marshall sentence was passed on 15th December, 1956 by Judge Lt. István Pinczés. The sentence was carried out ninety minutes later, and József Soltész was shot by firing squad on the Miskolc military firing range for concealing weapons. They invented the simplified procedure for trials heard by civilian judges. Reinstated Chief of the Supreme Court József Domokos said: “Don't let the civilian judges laugh, let them carry their weight too.” It was at this point that a large number of Hungarian judges resigned.
Mr Zinner recalls a story he heard from Dr Mihály Jáhner-Bakos, who chaired the Supreme Court at the time of the Imre Nagy trial. He said that he first met János Kádár because they shared a garden fence. They would walk up and down on either side of the fence, and chat. Only the fence between the Cserje utca and Józsefhegyi út lots can tell what was uttered there.