Wallenberg and the Jewish Doctors
Wallenberg and the Jewish Doctors

Summary/Abstract: “Stir up the embers of ire, / the flames of hatred! / The accusation falls on assassin “doctors” / who sowed cruel death – / let them reap the hatred of the people, / let them be swallowed by a bottomless depth / – those who would tear out Zhdanov’s / faithful heart a thousand times…” – wrote poet Lajos Kónya in early-1953 in his poem reflecting on political events of the time. The Hungarian general public first heard of Stalin’s last great reprisal on 14 January 1953. Pravda published an editorial – allegedly drafted by the Soviet dictator himself – on doctors “on the payroll of imperialists” and in the service of Joint, a “Jewish bourgeois nationalist organisation”. The piece was used in its entirety by Szabad Nép – the daily newspaper of the ruling Communist party of Hungary, the Hungarian Working People’s Party. The “white-smocked assassins” – as they were called in the Soviet communiqué – supposedly murdered via mistreatment for instance Colonel General Shcherbakov, as well as Zhdanov, mentioned in Kónya’s poem.

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