1951: The Case of Sándor Szűcs
The attempt prevent defections only became more extreme after the Communists took power in 1949. The punishment of Sándor Szűcs was the most severe one that a Hungarian athlete received throughout the entire period of socialist rule. A member of the Golden team who played for the Police team, Szűcs tried to defect to Austria in early 1951. He was married at the time but was having an affair with a celebrated singer named Erzsébet “Erzsi” Kovács. Szűcs was a member of the Dózsa Sport Club, the Police team. As a member of this team, he was a ranked policeman. The Ministry of Interior, under which the Police team played, learned of Szűcs’s plans to defect.Under the Ministry’s orders, a Secret Police an informant infiltrated Szűcs’s inner planning circle.[1]
After being caught at the Austrian-Hungarian border, Szűcs was tried by a military tribunal, since he was a member of the police. He was found guilty, and summarily executed in March of 1951. The socialist leadership worked with the Ministry of Interior, Secret Police, and National Physical Education and Sport Office (OTSH) to catch Szűcs and turn him into a lesson for what would happen if someone else tried to defect. The message worked: no other athlete defected until the 1956 Olympic Games.
[1] Norbert Tabi, “Futball és politika kapcsolata Magyarországon a II. Világháború után” (The Connection Between Football and Politics in Hungary after The Second World War), in Paletta: I. Új és Jelenkortörténeti Tudományos Diákkonferencia (Tanulmáynkötet), Edited by Bálint Fekete and Viktor Nyul, Budapest, 2014, 57-76.
