Ottó Szirmai

From the Hungarian Wikipedia page [https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szirmai_Ott%C3%B3

Ottó Szirmai (Budapest, November 16, 1926 - Budapest, January 22, 1959) is a dramaturg of the Hungarian Radio, a participant of the 1956 Revolution, a victim of post-revolutionary retaliation.

He was born on November 16, 1926 in Budapest. The members of his family have played an active role for several generations in the international communist workers' movement and in other revolutionary movements. His grandfather was Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteer, Leo Frankel, a friend and co-worker at the end of the 19th century, who was involved in the organization of the Transylvanian breeding strings and other workers' movements. His uncle was a member of the Soviet Communist Party in 1917, a member of Lenin's security guard, later serving as a courier service. The oldest of his four sons was shot at the border of Soviet-Russia-Hungary in 1921 when he wanted to escape to his father. The death of his next sibling was caused by the police brutality. Organizing work among wine workers. Their wives died as a result of deportation, and the youngest was killed in 1945 by wounded in robbers' work. His father, who was an iron worker, and his younger cousin, like a red soldier, fought during the Soviet Republic. His father was an iron worker, he was involved in the communist movement of the beginning of the century. His mother was a washer, she died in 1935. After completing his studies, he worked for a while as an auxiliary worker because the family lived in very difficult financial circumstances. In 1943 he became a stage designer at the National Theater, later at the College of Applied Arts. He also studied dramaturgy and worked as a dramatist at the Hungarian Department of Literature. He joined the Hungarian Communist Party in 1945 and was also a member of the Hungarian Workers' Party. In 1950 he became married and married three sons, including Peter Szirmai, who became a playwright.

On October 30, János Kádár sent him to the firefighters at Firefighter Street to put them on the side of the government. He then met his old acquaintance, István Angyal, and joined the Tűzoltó street group he led. He could not have done armed services - since his right hand was a lame since his birth - but he remained at the Tűzoltó street unit all the time. In the second Soviet attack, he helped the group with information gathered on the phone. On November 5, he was a parliamentarian at the Kossuth Academy with the Soviet command - without results.
 * On 23 October he attended the demonstration in front of the Petőfi and Bem statues. In the evening he tried to calm down the demonstrators, and when the siege of the radio began, he escaped the women from the building. There he was with Gergely Pongrátz during Corvin, spending days with his friend, István Angyal, among the firefighters in Tűzoltó street. With the delegation of the insurgents, he even turned to Katonarét, the Soviet commander in Lőrinc, as an interpreter. Tamás Tavaszi wrote in the free newspapers of the time. He wrote to capture the events.
 * On October 29, he was negotiating in Parliament for the democratization of radio operation.
 * On November 6, he was accompanied by a wounded Austrian journalist at the hospital in Bakáts Square, and since that time Ferenc körút was under the fire of the Soviet warships, he could not return, he was torn from the group. He joined the resistance at the Péterfy Sándor Street Hospital in a few days and participated in the writing and production of pamphlets. He had contact with the Writers 'Association, the workers' councils, the Intelligence Revolutionary Committee. After the arrest of the raid in the Domonkos Street hospital and the arrest of István Angyal, he sought to compress the various university groups into a youth party. He initiated the establishment of the Youth Party, drafted its draft program, marking his party's primary aim: protecting the country and achieving its independence, preserving the socialist achievements. He confessed to the idea of ​​the Danube Confederation, considered a Hungarian-Yugoslavian-Polish unity front to the Soviet Union.
 * From November 20, the name of Élünk was marked by the name of Gyula Obersovszky and József Gáli, but also part of the dissemination of the paper. He contacted the Central Workers' High Council in Budapest and other organizations for the idea of ​​the revolution. He did not consider the armed struggle to be timely, but politically he took a much more radical stance.
 * On November 21, he participated in the formation of the Revolutionary Council of Hungarian Interpretation and the organization of the Women's Demonstration of 4 December.
 * In December 1956 he was invited to work at the Hungarian Radio, but he did not go there, he could not go home. He was arrested at his workplace at the Department of Literature's dramaturgy. His wife, (Szirmai Ottóné Báthory Mária) did not know why and what had happened to him. She almost did not say anything about the rare encounter between October and November, what she did, what she was going through: "Better you do not know anything. So there is nothing to get out of you."

He was searched several times on his home, and was later abducted on January 14, 1957. At first instance, the Mayor of the Metropolitan Court, Gusztáv Tutsek, ruled on 17 April 1958 on the basis of leadership and other accusations. This was brought into force by the Supreme Court of the People's Court of Justice, led by Viktor Cieslár, on 27 November 1958. He did not plead with mercy but with a just judgment, because he did not agree that he was found guilty. Although in the Grace Council, Tóth Istvánné, the representative of the Supreme Prosecutor proposed rejecting the request, the Hungarian Council of Peoples recommended it to grace and submitted the pleadings to the Presidential Council of the People's Republic. His petition for grace was rejected by the Presidential Council. On 21 January 1959, the Municipal Court of the Metropolitan Court passed a decision rejecting the Presidential Council's decision and refusing to submit its application for revision by the Budapest Public Prosecutor's Office. Because of the latter, Szirmai wanted to make a complaint with the Attorney General, but this was not the case. The next day the verdict was executed, executed on January 22, 1959. Following the death sentence of the First Instance in 1958, the family's one-room apartment was taken with the exception of the three beds. The confession of confiscation was also included in the sentence. Oda, the only third bed left behind by the walls was the wife of the third boys born in the meantime, whom Ottó Szirmai could no longer see.