The issue of Zionism was yesterday injected into the trial here of Laszlo Rajk, former Foreign and Interior Minister, and seven other Hungarians charged with spying for a joint “American-Yugoslav plot” against the present Hungarian regime.
One of the defendants, Tibor Szoenyi, a former high Communist Party official who spent the years between 1939 and 1944 in Switzerland as a refugee from Hungary, was asked by the presiding justice at the trial whether he had been a member of a Zionist group. Dr. Szoenyi denied that he had been a Zionist but declared that two other members of the “spy ring” had been Zionist. He also declared that at the end of 1944 Zionist groups in Switzerland were in “close contact” with American secret service agents.
Another defendant, Andraas Szalai, told the court that he had been a Zionist from 1930 to 1932. Paul Justus, a third defendant, denied ever having been a member of the Zionist movement.
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