Chief Rabbi Béla Berend was long considered a black sheep in the history of Hungarian Jewish leadership. His controversial activities within the Budapest Jewish Council during the German occupation and the Holocaust of 1944–45, followed by his trial before the People’s Tribunal—and the simultaneous toxic media campaign against him—left a lasting mark on his legacy.
Since then historians have come to view his actions in a more positive light, considering that the charges against him are now known to have been politically motivated.[1] After being acquitted by the National Council of People’s Tribunals, he left for the United States in September 1947. He adopted the name Albert Bruce Belton, a change officially recorded in the summer of 1954. I have written about his years in America before, but here I would like to add some additional details about Berend (Belton)’s activities in the United States.
Although during his emigration, Béla Berend made strongly pro-Israel and anti-communist statements and wrote articles reflecting these views, documents from the secret police officers deployed under diplomatic cover at the Hungarian embassy in Washington, DC (the so-called ‘intelligence station’) provide a more nuanced picture.
On 25 January 1956 the Washington intelligence station reported to Budapest that the currently unemployed rabbi wanted to return home. The secret police officer, whose identity is not discussed here, met Berend in a restaurant and described him as an ‘agile, cunning, and loud man’. Berend mentioned that he was fluent in English, well-acquainted with America, and had connections with Radio Free Europe, an archenemy of Communist Hungary. He did not even consider the possibility of becoming a rabbi in Hungary again, as he believed the Jewish community would not accept him.
‘Berend wanted to meet his daughter, which led him to seek good relations with the Rákosi regime’
He made no effort to conceal that his primary motivations were financial and familial. ‘He spoke about the matter without any sanctimony, almost on a business-like basis.’ He candidly admitted that if he had become a millionaire, he would not return—‘but he didn’t’. Furthermore, after his trial before the People’s Tribunal, his wife left him and remarried. She no longer kept in touch with him, which meant he had no contact with his 10- or 11-year-old daughter, who had been born just days before his arrest in 1945. Berend wanted to meet his daughter, which led him to seek good relations with the Rákosi regime.[2]
At first, Berend only intended to visit Hungary and feared he would be arrested again if he set foot in the country. This fear, however, was unfounded—as the intelligence station also noted—, since his final acquittal meant he could not be considered a war criminal.
During the conversation, Berend dropped several key phrases that he may have thought would resonate favourably with the communist embassy official. He made it clear that he was an anti-capitalist and even an atheist. ‘People cannot be kept ignorant of religion forever. He does not believe in God, but he still has to make a living, which is why he remains involved in this field and preaches in both Jewish and Christian temples.’ (This was not a lie—Berend’s papers confirm that he participated in ecumenical services and even officiated mixed weddings.) He also indicated that even if he could not return home for the time being, he still wanted to maintain good relations with the embassy.
Up to this point, the rabbi was likely on the right track, but then he ‘overshot the mark’. He told his conversation partner that ‘the Americans’ talk too much and had even shared information with him about ‘the locations of nuclear installations and other strategically important areas’. He stated that ‘he would be happy to assist us…though, of course, he was not saying he would engage in espionage’.
These last remarks raised the secret police officer’s suspicions, leading him to consider the possibility that Berend’s approach was a staged provocation. Nevertheless, his overall impression was not entirely negative: ‘The subject undoubtedly gives the impression of a highly intelligent individual with extensive knowledge, broad connections, and a courageous demeanour.’
He did not recommend inviting Berend back to Hungary—though if he could serve as a rabbi there, he might have been useful for disruption and propaganda purposes. However, a more practical approach seemed to be to invite him to Vienna and attempt to recruit him there, as this would also allow him to maintain contact with his daughter more easily. ‘His daughter, who lives in Hungary and whom he claims to love deeply, could be a significant leverage point.’ In this sense, the report suggested, he should definitely be considered a potential candidate for network operations. As a next step, the officer suggested that Berend be commissioned to write a few studies for the embassy in exchange for payment. These would be evaluated, and further actions could be decided based on the results.
In February 1956 Berend was visited at his New York apartment, where he was given a questionnaire to facilitate his return to Hungary. At this point, Berend began acting with excessive enthusiasm, which raised the secret police officer’s suspicions again.
First, Berend repeatedly asked who the official actually was—clearly not believing that he was merely speaking with a regular embassy staff member. Then, he attempted to hand over American newspaper clippings, ‘weighing at least a kilogram’. The officer refused to even look at the material, likely wary of a provocation.
Following this, Berend produced brochures he had received from Radio Free Europe. The officer found these more intriguing but ultimately decided to reject them as well. After this, the rabbi began sharing gossip about the radio station.
‘Why are those remaining Jews making such a fuss?’
The conversation appears to have continued primarily on an ideological level. Berend, who came from an Orthodox family, began discussing how, if he were to return to Hungary, he would become a Reform rabbi, as he could not be Neológ (conservative). He explained that Reform Judaism ‘rejects old Orthodox ritual customs and traditions, such as wearing a cap or keeping kosher, and he would establish everything on a completely new foundation (sic!).’ He added that he would ‘sever ties with Israel and eliminate the basis for Zionism’. His vision was to organize everything along national lines, independent of the World Jewish Congress while allowing ample room for the Communist regime’s influence.
This was a rather extreme offer from a rabbi who publicly presented himself as a Zionist. While the National Association of Hungarian Israelites (MIOK) officially followed an anti-Israel stance at the time, the rejection of kippot and kashrut, the idea of ‘new foundations’ and a fully ‘national’ (perhaps meaning a socialist-Hungarian assimilationist approach?) and anti-Zionist programme would have been considered extreme even then.
Regarding the Middle East situation, he remarked: ‘Why are those remaining Jews making such a fuss? If the Arabs go wild, they’ll sweep them into the sea before either the British or the Americans can help—and it’s questionable whether they even would.’ It is unclear how serious he was regarding this statement. In the American Jewish press, Berend frequently wrote pro-Israel articles under the name Belton, yet during the conversation, he also claimed that there was another Béla Berend in America who wrote anti-communist articles—and that they were not the same person (even though the supposed ‘other Berend’s’ activities sounded exactly like his own).
In the end, Berend once again pleaded for either his daughter to be allowed to join him—though it is unclear who would have taken an 11-year-old girl abroad against her mother’s wishes—or for him to be allowed to return home to see her, or at least to meet her in a third country. ‘If he couldn’t return home, he at least wanted to see his daughter.’
At the end of the report, the secret police officer wrote an evaluation. Berend did not give the impression of being an American spy, but his trust in the rabbi was not complete. It did not leave a good impression that he seemed to know the tricks of ‘conspiratorial correspondence’: he sealed his letters carefully and did not sign them. To clarify the situation, the secret police officer suggested sending him a ‘special letter’ to check whether the Americans were monitoring their correspondence. The officer also proposed looking into the possibility of working together with him, but only in light of how the ‘domestic investigation’—meaning the examination of Berend’s previous activities in Hungary and the potential discovery of compromising information—turned out.
The report essentially recommended employing him, suggesting he could write studies about Radio Free Europe, possibly in exchange for payment. The next meeting with Berend could potentially be a clandestine one. From this point on, the intelligence station referred to the candidate by the cover name ‘Mózes’ (Moses).
The last relevant document in the intelligence station’s files concerning ‘Mózes’ is a memorandum from April 1956. It is clear that much transpired between the two dates, but what exactly occurred is only vaguely referenced in the incomplete material. The document primarily reprimands the intelligence officers for not sufficiently investigating ‘Mózes’s’ background, which led to the failure to discover that he had been a Gestapo spy during the German occupation. (As noted, even the People’s Court did not accept that Berend had ever been a Gestapo agent.)
The memorandum concluded that they would no longer maintain contact with ‘Mózes’ as he was most likely a provocateur sent to discredit the Hungarian People’s Republic. The document treated as a fact that Berend had been in contact with the FBI or that American authorities were monitoring him and that the rabbi was somehow aware of this. ‘If he was sincere, then he might have been terrified by the FBI,’ the memorandum noted, though it is difficult to interpret this line without further details. It is also possible that Berend had been asked to sign a statement or a ‘confession’, which is what the document implied.
‘He was on the list of “leaders of the fascist Hungarian emigration” living in America, alongside members of the Arrow Cross’
It is unclear what this referred to, but it appears that Berend may have written a letter to the embassy about his connection with the FBI. The intelligence station’s file on ‘Mózes’ ends here. Berend himself likely realized that he could not return to Hungary along this path, so in 1957 he turned to Endre Sós, the new president of MIOK, for help. Sós, also an agent of state security under the cover name ‘Sipos’, did not recommend returning home.[3]
The rabbi is mentioned several times in the secret service materials of the subsequent Kádár regime. Most of the references relate to the belief that Berend was a supposed war criminal from World War II: he was on the list of ‘leaders of the fascist Hungarian emigration’ living in America, alongside members of the Arrow Cross and gendarmes. If such a person, or a relative of theirs, had applied for a passport, department II/3 of the Interior Ministry (BM) had to be notified.[4]
In addition to the above, it appears that at least on two more occasions, the secret service monitored Berend in the 1970s. The references primarily concern the rabbi’s media campaign against Cardinal József Mindszenty (and his memory), as well as his legal proceedings against the writer György Moldova—already detailed by the author of these lines elsewhere[5]—conducted in Hungary through his lawyer.
In connection with the former, we learn from the documents that in 1975 an agent named ‘János Berkesi’ visited Berend in the United States and received several historical documents from him related to Mindszenty, which contained compromising content. These were probably not particularly valuable—Berend primarily attacked Mindszenty using press sources—but nonetheless, ‘Berkesi’ concluded that the rabbi was ‘a hurt, offended man, who would never reconcile with his conscience or the world’. This was likely true: Berend obviously did not take kindly to his offer being rejected.[6]
As for the other topic, Berend’s polemic did not begin in 1975 with Moldova and the Kortárs journal. In the years prior, he had already expressed his objections in several letters, accusing the writer of referring to him as a collaborator in a text published in the journal (which later appeared as a book titled Szent Imre-induló). Due to his extensive correspondence in Budapest, a ‘K check’ (ie monitoring of postal traffic) was introduced against Berend, seemingly as early as 1972. According to a report written by the BM III/II-4 division in May 1972: ‘the “K” materials indicate that Dr Belton lives under difficult financial circumstances in the USA and speaks with contempt and hatred about the Hungarian People’s Republic. He considers it a “miserable country.”’[7] A report written by the BM III/III-1-c department in September 1975 states: ‘We are still monitoring Dr Albert B Belton’s correspondence.’[8]
We have to add the observation to the article above that we do not have enough information about Berend’s relationship with the state security to draw profound conclusions. What seems certain is that for some reason, the rabbi approached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Rákosi regime—and its intelligence service—offering his services. The state security appears to have quickly concluded that ‘Mózes’, under his alias, was an unsuitable candidate for network work and that his approach was likely for provocation, thus they rejected it. However, we cannot exclude that Berend might have been genuinely motivated by a desire to reconnect with his daughter. It appears that the rabbi did not fully reveal his true feelings to the intelligence service, as he continued to criticize communism in his private correspondence. The discovery of further documents in the future may help uncover the rabbi’s true motivations more thoroughly.
[1] Schmidt Mária, Kollaboráció vagy kooperáció? A Budapesti Zsidó Tanács, Bp, Minerva, 1990, pp. 337–390; and Munkácsi Krisztina, ‘Berend Béla főrabbi népbírósági pere’, Századok, 1996/6, 1525–1552; and Veszprémy László Bernát, Tanácstalanság. A zsidó vezetés Magyarországon és a holokauszt, 1944–1945, Bp, Jaffa, 2023, pp. 213–242.
[2] For all files on Berend, unless specifically stated, see: Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (ÁBSZTL), 3.2.6. OL-8-011/VIII.
[3] Wiener Library (London), 598b, Berend papers.
[4] ÁBSZTL, 3.2.5. O-8-073/1/228–229.
[5] Veszprémy, Tanácstalanság, 213–242.
[6] ÁBSZTL, 3.2.3. Mt-126/2.
[7] ÁBSZTL, 3.1.5. O-17169/3. 138.
[8] ÁBSZTL, 3.1.5. O-17169/4. 128.
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