Raoul Wallenberg - Show Trial in 1953

Show Trial in 1953

In April 1952, Hungarian State Protection Authority (Hungarian: Államvédelmi Hatóság or ÁVH) kidnapped Miksa Domonkos, László Benedek and Lajos Stöckler, three leaders of the Jewish community in Budapest, to extract scripted confessions under torture. Two purported eyewitnesses – Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó – were also arrested and interrogated using torture. This was in preparation for a show trial to be mounted in 1953 by the Hungarian ÁVH to prove that Wallenberg had not been moved to the Soviet Union in 1945, but was the victim of cosmopolitan Zionists.

This was after the Prague Trials or purge, when the mostly Jewish Communist leaders were executed in 1952 and at the time when the Soviets were planning a major antisemitic show trial in Moscow, the "Doctors' Plot". They accused mostly Jewish doctors of planning to murder Soviet leaders. Many Soviet Jews were fearful hearing that the Soviet plan was to have massive number of Jews deported to Siberia after likely execution of the doctors.

The idea that the "murderers of Wallenberg" were Budapest Zionists was primarily supported by Hungarian Communist leader Ernő Gerő, demonstrated by a note sent by him to First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi. The show trial was to be held in Moscow. But, after the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953 and the execution of Lavrentiy Beria, the AVH stopped preparations for the trial and released the prisoners. Domonkos spent a week in the hospital and died at home shortly afterward, mainly due to the torture he had suffered. The Soviet doctors were also released after Stalin's death.