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The Prince Primate condemned

In April 1948, the government announced the nationalization of religious schools. For practical and propaganda reasons, the government wanted to continue employing the excellent religious teachers but Cardinal Mindszenty decreed that the priests and the religious could not work in nationalized schools since they were spreading an atheist and anti-Hungarian mentality. Thus, he became one of the major enemies of world communism, and the communists wanted to remove him as much as possible from the stage of the ideological war.

On 26 December 1948 the State Protection Authority (ÁVH) arrested Cardinal Mindszenty. He was taken to 60 Andrássy Street, where he was tortured during two weeks with the aim of forcing him to sign the "confession" drafted on the basis of false accusations, which was necessary for initiating the trumped-up criminal proceeding against him.

Emlékhely Budapest

 

"It's 11 pm. I have been awake for 72 hours, they have beaten me with truncheons over and over again, and now they are taking me to another interrogation. They keep asking me all night about conspiracy and espionage. Now I am completely on my own, exhausted and worn out. I have to argue alone when they tell me again and again to sign the large pile of minutes...

Letartóztatás

 

... As long as I refuse to sign them, two or three times a night colonel Décsi hands me over to my torturer, who jumps up, takes me to my cell, makes me take off my clothes, floors me and rains blows on me with some perverse satisfaction. They have another cruel method to break me physically: they don't let me sleep."