GEORGE HODOS
587
Byelkin arrived in Budapest
to
work with Gabor Peter, the AVH chief, on
making the practical preparations for the purge and to train the Hungarian
police in the latest psychological and physical methods of extorting confes–
sions. Then, on the night of May 17, 1949, the avalanche began
to
roll. Tibor
Sz6nyi was arrested, followed soon by Rajk. Six weeks later it was my turn.
*
*
*
The next few months were so unreal that often, in the loneliness of my
cell, I dug my fingernails into my wounded flesh
to
make sure that I was not
going through an evil, crazy dream. My "report," in its various versions,
was .. repoliticized," as my interrogators called the distortions, and turned
into a particle of mosaic which fitted into their imaginary total picture of the
activities of a band of spies and conspirators.
The role assigned
to
me in this conspiracy was actually quite irrelevant
and could have been constructed in an entirely different way
to
serve other
purposes. Essentially I was brought into the story as an American spy in a
devilish scheme of Allen Dulles, head of the top secret Office of Strategic
Services (O.S.S.) in Berne. According to the plot, Dulles and his "master
spy," Noel Field, head of an American relief organization helping anti–
Fascist refugees, instructed Sz6nyi, in Switzerland, to recruit a gang of
imperialist agents, of which I was a member, whose mission it would be
to
return after the war
to
Hungary, infiltrate the Communist Party, and co–
ordinate espionage activities with those of the Titoist conspiracy ofRajk.
It
took them seven months to get me
to
admit the truth of this' 'story"
and to sign a confession. Their methods were actually quite primitive, if, in
the end, successful. All of my friends, they explained, were spies, Trotsky–
ites, saboteurs-they even read me their confessions-so how could I alone
among them remain guiltless? I was but a speck in all of this, a journalist,
foreign correspondent for the
Neue Zurcher Zeitung
and the
Neues Oster–
reich,
a contributor to the
Agence France Presse.
Didn't I know that all
foreign editors with whom I was in contact were agents of the American
intelligence who passed all my reports on
to
the O.S.S., and that, in actual
fact, my articles were espionage reports inspired by Sz6nyi and his accom–
plice, the Chief of the Press Office, Endre Rosta?
I was unconvinced and stubborn and so I was turned over to the Bad
Men. They wore uniforms and tried to teach me the truth by resort
to
familiar
devices, rubber truncheons, kicks, slaps, and gymnastic exercises.
They were followed by the Good Men, in civilian clothes, who used as
their means of persuasion, cigarettes, friendly conversation about the World
Youth Festival and soccer scores. Their line of attack was, "You are an
