Larry Pfeffer’s memories from Budapest
I was ten yeas old in Budapest when Stalin collapsed and died. I only recall the pervasive sense of mourning in the city. Black flags and black drapes were hanging from the buildings. The newspapers’ front page had a picture of Stalin within a thick black frame. As far as I recall on the eve of Purim 1953 I acted in a purimshpiel in the Orthodox community complex auditorium. Sundays and afternoons I attended cheder in that complex since age six. Probably this was one iof the few operating cheders left in the Communist empire. Periodically I saw the principal, Shlomo Grossberg – in fact, like others students, attended his wedding in the Orthodox complex courtyard where the chupah was. Suddenly there were rumors in the “Kazincy” central Orthodox synagogue that Shlomo was arrested by the Hungarian secret police. Grown-ups didn’t discuss such matters with children. Perhaps they also didn’t know what really happened. I recall Shlomo returning to his position maybe eight to ten months later and his face showed that he went through very difficult times. I recently met him in Israel and learned that he was arrested on Purim 1953 for a “Zionist” show trial. I didn’t want to ask him how he was treated, because I didn’t want to bring back painful memories.
Even as a child I often heard typical Communist propaganda about “Titoist traitors”, the “imperialists and their lackeys”, and “capitalist warmongers” – especially during the Korean war. In Hungary I was not aware of the scale of the Stalin’s terror against Jews and that it was not limited to the USSR: anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist trials were organized also in the Kremlin’s colonies. Only long after I escaped from Hungary in late 1956 did I became aware of the following events.
On November 20, 1952 Rudolf Slánský, the second most powerful in Czechoslovakia, and thirteen other leading Czechoslovak communists were arrested and tortured. Two received life sentence and the rest, including Slánský, were shot. Slánský and ten more of the arrested were Jews. The trumped up accusation was being “Titoists” and “spying” for the “Western capitalists and imperialists” – typical of Moscow directed show trials of that time.
Raoul Wallenberg, who did so much for humanity, fell into the hands of the Russianson January 17, 1945 – a day before the Russians drove out the Germans and occupied the Pest side of the city. Wallenberg disappeared into the Russian dungeons and the Gulag. His fate is still unknown. Reliable and highly respected investigators, such as Professor Irwin Cotler (former Canadian Minister of Justice), clearly state that Wallenberg was probably alive for decades after his abduction.
In 1952/53 a Moscow directed “Wallenberg” and “Zionist” show trial was in preparation in Budapest. Leaders of Hungary’s Jewry: Lajos Stöckler, Miklós Domonkos and Dr. László Benedek were arrested – along with two non-Jews who worked with Wallenberg: Pál Szalai and Károly Szabó. They were tortured to force them to “confess” the “crimes” invented by the “script”, according to which in 1945 they “murdered” Wallenberg in Budapest. (Szalai and Szabó rescued many Jews during the Holocaust. At Wallenberg’s request Szalai met with German general August Schmidthuber and prevented murder of Budapest ghetto’s 70,000 inhabitants.) Other Jewish leaders were arrested and accused of “Zionist crimes” and “spying for the “capitalists and imperialists.”
The antisemitic “Doctors’ Plot” and Budapest show trials stopped and the danger to Jews in the Soviet Union and its colonies was prevented by Stalin’s sudden possibly assisted collapse on March 1, 1953, which was Purim, and his subsequent death a few days later.
The accused doctors,the accused in Budapest, and probably large number of Jews and others living in Soviet Union and its empire were saved when Stalin collapsed on Purim 1953.
It is suggested to start remembering Purim 1953 in Israel and in Jewish communities around the world. Hopefully the Knesset would have an annual remembrance event and the Chief Rabbinate in Israel would advise synagogues to celebrate the miracle of Purim 1953. It is also hoped that schools in Israel will teach about these events and the immense crimes of international Communism, which is estimated to have taken about 94 million lives (“The Black Book of Communism” – Harvard Press)
Bottom left shows Stalin on the bedroom floor of his dacha outside Moscow, after he collapsed. Beria, secret police chief, is not hiding his joy. The tombstone on bottom right symbolizes some of the Jewish victims of Stalin era state led antisemitism. The gate over the rail tracks is taken from the Vorkuta Gulag camp entrance in the 1930-s and says: “Labor in the USSR is a matter of Honor and Glory”. The physicians in front of the Communist hammer and sickle icon are the accused in the infamous Soviet “Doctors’ Plot”. The men with the rifles symbolize execution of leading Jewish cultural and political figures in the USSR and Czechoslovakia. The train, the nearby crowd and skull allude to Stalin’s rumored plans to deport Soviet Jewry and the likelihood of large number of potential victims if Stalin didn’t collapse on Purim 1953.