Kádár's Last Speech

“They came for the prisoners early in the morning of 16 June. The courtyart of the Small Prison had been designated as the venue for the execution, and the condemned were escorted here one by one. The first to be hanged by executioner János Bogár, at 5:09 am, was the former communist leader Imre Nagy, who had called for an independent and socialist Hungary until his last breath. He was followed by two other leaders of the 1956 revolution: Pál Maléter and Miklós Gimes. Their bodies were buried in the prison courtyard, bundled in tarred paper and barbed wire. Two and a half years later, on 24 February 1961, the earthly remains of the three men were exhumed and taken under cover of darkness to the New Public Cemetery in the Rákoskeresztúr section of Budapest, where they were reburied, face down, in plot 301, the furthest from the main entrance. The burials were registered in the cemetery records under false names.”

In tribute to the memory of Imre Nagy, this performance at the Erkel Theatre starts precisely 60 years after the moment of his death and shows the complex relationship between Imre Nagy, László Rajk and János Kádár. At its centre are the desperate attempts of the lone surviving member of the trio to make the unacceptable defensible to his own self.