A communist judge who enforced political trials
Even in 1989, he maintained that Imre Nagy was guilty and expressed no regret for the judgment.
Ferenc Vida was a communist lawyer who had taken part in the illegal movement, endured imprisonment, and rose through Hungary’s postwar party and judicial bureaucracy. After the 1956 Revolution he became one of the judges who imposed the greatest number of death sentences in the state’s retaliatory trials. In the 1958 trial of Imre Nagy, he chaired the Supreme Court’s People’s Court Council, sharply restricting defendants’ statements and the defence’s requests for evidence, and sentenced Nagy, Miklós Gimes and Pál Maléter to death. He still refused in 1989 to acknowledge the trial’s illegality or express remorse.
Career Timeline
- 1934Graduated from Szeged law academy and helped found the Palestine Communist Party
- 1935–1942Joined Hungary’s illegal communist movement and worked as a trainee lawyer
- 1942–1945Sentenced to life imprisonment in the Schönherz trial and deported to Germany
- 1945–1949District party secretary and adviser to the Ministry of the Interior
- 1951–1953Worked in the Ministry of Justice
- 1953–1972Judge of the Supreme Court, presiding over People’s Court Councils and serving as deputy head of a judicial college
- 1958Presiding judge in the Imre Nagy trial, issuing death sentences