OPINION

February 24, 1957

CIVIL COLD WAR: Yesterday’s issue of The Military News carried a report from Vienna to the effect that the bloodbath in Hungary was due to a group of foreign communists who informed on their compatriots in Hungary. This group, set up by Moscow on the fringes of the unrest in Budapest, was called the «directorate for the mobilization of the minorities in Hungary.» The leaders of this criminal directorate are none other than a Greek, Eftychios Avramidis (aka Bela Gellert), and a Bulgarian, Ignatius Kostakov. According to the source, the directorate betrayed thousands of «reactionaries» into the hands of Red hangmen and the Russians. As for Avramidis, he is 58 to 60 years old, a teacher from the Black Sea who became a communist in Istanbul and went to Moscow for training in espionage. He was one of the first senior foreign cadres used by Russia in missions abroad. From 1923-27, he was allegedly operating between Istanbul, Athens, Belgrade and Sofia, and since 1928 has been on missions in central Europe. He is said to have committed terrible acts of torture, both on Greeks abducted behind the Iron Curtain and Greek communists who subsequently rejected the ideology.

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