Imre Nagy - Secret Trial and Execution

Secret Trial and Execution

Subsequently, the Soviets returned him to Hungary, where he was secretly charged with organising the overthrow of the Hungarian people's democratic state and with treason. Nagy was secretly tried, found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by hanging in June 1958. His trial and execution were made public only after the sentence had been carried out. According to Fedor Burlatsky, a Kremlin insider, Nikita Khrushchev had Nagy executed, "as a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries."

He was buried, along with his co-defendants, in the prison yard where the executions were carried out and years later was moved to a distant corner (section 301) of the Municipal Cemetery of Budapest., face-down, and with his hands and feet tied with barbed wire. Next to his grave stands a memorial bell inscribed in Latin, Hungarian, German and English. The Latin reads: "Vivos voco / Mortuos plango / Fulgura frango," which is translated as: "I call the living, I mourn the dead, I master (lit. "break") the lightning."

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