State Protection Authority
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Államvédelmi Hatóság | |
Agency overview | |
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Formed | 10 September 1948 |
Preceding agencies |
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Dissolved | 28 October 1956(declared)7 November 1956 (confirmed) |
Superseding agency | |
Type | Secret police |
Jurisdiction | Hungary |
Headquarters | Andrássy út 60., Budapest |
Employees | 30,000 (1953) |
Agency executives |
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Parent agency | Budapest Police Ministry of Interior |
The State Protection Authority
Archived data related to the ÁVH and the Ministry of Internal Affairs III are made available through the Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security .[1]
History
This is a summary of the organisations acting as
- 1945: Budapest Department of State Political Police, (Budapesti Főkapitányság Politikai Rendészeti Osztálya, PRO)
- 1946: Hungarian State Police State Defense Department, (Magyar Államrendőrség Államvédelmi Osztálya, ÁVO)
- 1950: State Protection Authority, (Államvédelmi Hatóság, ÁVH)
- 1956: the agency was abolished by the revolutionary government of Imre Nagy.
Between 1945 and 1952, Gábor Péter (Benjamin Eisenberger) was the absolute head of the State Protection Authority (Államvédelmi Hatóság), responsible for much cruelty, brutality and many political purges. László Rajk, the Communist Minister of Interior played a crucial role in organizing the State Protection Authority (ÁVH), but in 1949 he was one of its victims.
1953 Wallenberg show trial preparations
ÁVH actions were not subject to
The last people to meet Wallenberg in Budapest were Ottó Fleischmann, Károly Szabó, and Pál Szalai, who were invited to a supper at the Swedish Embassy building in Gyopár street on January 12, 1945.[3] The next day, January 13, Wallenberg contacted the Russians. By 1953, Ottó Fleischmann had left Hungary, working as a physician in Vienna, Antwerp, Ghent, Milan, Turin & Genoa.
On 8 April 1953, Károly Szabó was captured on the street and arrested without any legal procedure. His family had no news of him throughout the following six months. A secret trial was conducted against him of which no official record is available to date. After six months of interrogation, the defendants were driven to despair and exhaustion.
The idea that the "murderers of Wallenberg" were Budapest
In Hungarian Revolution of 1956
During the
During and after the siege of the Hungarian Working People's Party headquarters (in Republic Square, Köztársaság tér), some members of the ÁVH were lynched, a fact later extensively used in party propaganda to back up the claim that the revolution was of a "fascistic, anti-Semitic and reactionary" nature.
Persecution by József Dudás' militia
Attacks on the ÁVH became a significant activity only as informal truces developed between the student-controlled combat organisations and the Soviet troops in Budapest. Freed from the necessity of immediate combat, the József Dudás militia planned a series of reprisals against ÁVH officers, informants, and on a few occasions against ordinary Communist-party members caught up in the revolution.
On October 29, in the second week of the revolution, the Dudás militia attacked the headquarters of the secret police in Budapest, massacring the ÁVH inside. This event was well documented by both western and eastern journalists and photographers, and constituted the primary evidence against Imre Nagy and other members of his cabinet in the White Books.
A Western eyewitness said:
The secret police lie twisted in the gutter [...] the Hungarians will not touch the corpse of an ÁVH man, not even to close the eyes or straighten the neck.
After Dudás' militia assaulted the building, the surrounding crowd lynched a number of ÁVH officers. Highly visible in photographs of this attack are the party's paybooks displayed on to the corpses, demonstrating that ÁVH soldiers received at least 10 times the wages of a manual worker.
Reaction of revolutionary forces to Dudás
When the students' and workers' councils discovered what the Dudás group was doing, they instituted armed patrols to arrest and detain ÁVH members for their own safety, and for future planned trials. As a result of Dudás' massacres, and the students' policy of arrest, many ÁVH voluntarily turned themselves in to students' or workers' councils to seek protective custody. This was a reflection of the shared student-worker policy of keeping the revolution pure and bloodless. Dudás was sought for arrest by the students' and workers' councils.
Retaliation
Unsurprisingly, when the Warsaw Pact intervened in the revolution to support the government, ÁVH officers carried out brutal reprisals against those who had killed their comrades. The ÁVH generally targeted all revolutionaries, and received significant assistance from the Soviet Union's security apparatus, who arrested the Nagy government, General Pál Maléter, and deported one student and workers to the Soviet Union.
House of Terror
Shortly after the
End of ÁVH
The subsequent government of János Kádár did not wish to resurrect the ÁVH under this name after 1956 (Kádár was tortured by the ÁVH in the 1950s), yet it flourished in the system of the Ministry of Interior (Hungarian BM). This should be considered in the light of the use of the Soviet security apparatus directly in Hungary after the 1956 revolution, and in preparation for the trial of Nagy and "his accomplices". Between 1956 and 1963 Kádár, a natural opportunist, fought an inner party battle against hardline Stalinists, although he accepted the services of many cruel former AVH torturers.
Kádár's victory was signalled in 1963 by a general amnesty for the 1956 revolutionaries, an indication of the absence of a political police. Hungary would go on to be the only Warsaw Pact country without a formal intelligence service, since all intelligence and espionage functions were vested in the AVH, and later the Hungarian Ministry of Interior.
Duties
While the security apparatus was operating, it supported the
The investigation network was supplemented with a mechanism of secret arrests, followed by extensive periods of
International activities
The ÁVH also assisted the Soviet sphere security apparatus by staging
Concentration camps
Following sentence, political prisoners were imprisoned. To serve this purpose, more penal institutions (the prison in Vác, the transit prison, the state security prison in Mosonyi Street) and internment camps (in Kistarcsa, Recsk, Tiszalök, Kazincbarcika and according to the latest research, in Bernátkút and Sajóbábony) were placed under the supervision of the State Protection Authority. [6] The most notorious of these camps were in Recsk, Kistarcsa, Tiszalök and Kazincbarcika. [7]
These camps were mixed and varied. Early camps tended to be cruder and more cruel. In particular, the status of ex-party members varied. In camps prior to 1953 they were more harshly treated than other prisoners. After 1953, ex-party members were a virtual aristocracy within prisons.[citation needed] Additionally, prior to 1953 certain camps had as their goal the eventual death of inmates due to overwork and maltreatment.[citation needed] In a number of cases, torture was an essential part of camp life and discipline.[citation needed]
Imre Nagy's first government from 1953 to 1955 vastly improved conditions in the camps and halted the efforts to exterminate political prisoners.[citation needed]
- See also: Kistarcsa Central Internment Camp
Successor
The Hungarian Ministry of Interior created the Ministry of Internal Affairs III for domestic and foreign intelligence purposes until the end of the Cold War. It operated with considerably more restraint than the ÁVH.
Notes
- ^ Also translated as State Security Authority and State Defense Authority
References
- ^ "Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security". Hungarian Archives Portal. Archived from the original on 2019-09-14. Retrieved 2021-10-23.
- ^ a b Interview with István Domonkos Archived 2007-10-23 at the Wayback Machine, son of Miksa Domonkos who died after the show trial preparations (in Hungarian)
- ISBN 963-7323-14-7, Budapest 1997, Publisher: Budapest Archives, p. 74
- ^ Kenedi János: Egy kiállítás hiányzó képei Archived 2007-03-02 at the Wayback Machine (in Hungarian)
- ^ Hungarian Quarterly Archived 2007-02-27 at the Wayback Machine (in Hungarian)
- ^ From secret interrogations to the “Vatican” of transit prison
- ^ Internment
External links
- The history of ÁVH (in Hungarian), from the website of the Public Historical Files of the Hungarian Secret Services [1]
- Homepage Raoul Wallenberg Asso.fr
- An informative review in East Central Europe (in English)