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Recording of Imre Nagy's show trial made publicly available

09.06.2008

Since Monday morning, a digitalized recording of the trial of the martyred Prime Minister Imre Nagy and his peers has been playing at the Centrális Galéria of the Open Society Archives (OSA) on Budapest's Arany János utca, writes origo.hu. The hearing, which took place exactly 50 years ago in June 1958, lasted 52 hours. Nagy's hearing has been playing since 12:15 today and you can hear it if you click on the video link below.

The original recording has been stored in the Hungarian National Archives since 1990. Following a debate, the institution agreed to make a digitalized version public for this occasion. All relatives of victims of the trial also consented to playing the recording this week.

The audio is the most complete document of the trial, and is of good quality and easy to understand and follow. It contains the whole process of the trial from the first day until the submission of requests for parole, including the indictment, the hearing of defendants and witnesses, the defense arguments and the last words.

Judith Gyenes, the widow of Pál Maléter, Hungary's Minister of Defense in 1956 who was also executed, stated that she found it jarring to hear her husband's voice again for the first time in fifty years, hirszerzo.hu reports. Gyenes was accompanied at the Centrális Galéria by Nagy's granddaughter Katalin Jánosi and 1956 Institute director János M. Rainer.

Source: Caboodle

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