page_title: Imre Nagy
section_title: Secret trial and execution
hierarchical_section_title: Imre Nagy / Secret trial and execution
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue of Imre Nagy in Budapest, relocated from Vértanúk tere, to the renovated southern part of Jászai Mari tér (south of Margaret Bridge), opened on June 5th, 2019 Magyar: A budapesti Nagy Imre szobor új helyén, a felújított Jászai Mari téren (a Margit hídtól délre fekvő részén), amit 2019. június 5-én nyitottak meg.
context_page_description: Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against the Soviet-backed government, for which he was executed two years later.
  Nagy was a committed communist from soon after the Russian Revolution, and through the 1920s he engaged in underground party activity in Hungary. Living in the Soviet Union from 1930, he served the Soviet NKVD secret police as an informer from 1933 to 1941, denouncing over 200 colleagues, who were then purged and arrested and 15 of whom were executed. Nagy returned to Hungary shortly before the end of World War II, and served in various offices as the Hungarian Working People's Party took control of Hungary in the late 1940s and the country entered the Soviet sphere of influence. He played a key role in the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of German-speaking Hungarians from 1945 to 1946 as Interior Minister of Hungary.
context_section_description: Subsequently, the Soviets returned Nagy to Hungary, where he was secretly charged with organizing 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". American journalist John Gunther described the events leading to Nagy's death as "an episode of unparalleled infamy".
  Nagy was buried, along with his co-defendants, in the prison yard where the executions were carried out and years later was removed to a distant corner (section 301) of the New Public Cemetery, 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 break the thunderbolts".
caption: Imre Nagy statue at Jászai Mari tér in Budapest.
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