The Hunt

Behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, the Red hunt bore down implacably on party heretics, class enemies and "agents of Western imperialism." Most spectacular was the Vogeler trial in Hungary (see above). The pattern elsewhere:

In Rumania, said the Cominform Journal, a "verification" purge had cleansed the party of 180,000 "alien class elements, opportunists and Titoite agents."

In Czechoslovakia, the hunters stalked the countryside for a new quarry: farmers who owned more than 50 acres of land. The new "class enemies" were packed off to forced labor; their land was confiscated. Prague also named a pro-Communist priest, Dean Jan Dechet, to administer the vacant bishopric of Banska Bystrica. The Vatican struck back by excommunicating Dechet.

In Poland, Bishop Kazimierz Kowalski of Chelmo was placed under house arrest. He had offended, said Warsaw, by making "all types of threats" against "patriotic" priests who had supported the Red government's crackdown on the Catholic welfare organization Caritas.

In Eastern Germany, a drive was under way to force clergymen into the Communist-run National Front. Konrad Cardinal von Preysing, Roman Catholic bishop of Berlin, struck back by putting the National Front under episcopal ban. The Red press angrily attacked the prelate as a "gladiator for American imperialism."

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