Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
‘THE HUNGARIAN MAFIA’ - A chink on the peace front: Frankfurt am Main
'THE HUNGARIAN MAFIA' on this report, it is safe to assume that the Brody brothers were in contact with the Soviets, which would explain why a mediocre journalist, István Brody, was given the task in 1947 of establishing a relationship of strategic importance. We can safely discount the possibility that he was picked at random without a story behind him. It was the Muscovite Zoltán Vas who sent István Brody to the West German zone to negotiate, and it was also he who liaised with János Brody, the only Brody sibling involved in grain trading. Zoltán Vas was one of Comintern’s leaders in the interwar period, so his trust in the Brody brothers probably dated back to his time in the illegal movement. As a novice journalist, István worked in Berlin, then centre of the Communist network in the West, “which had a sizeable Hungarian diaspora.”185 We do not know about István Brody’s nexuses in Berlin, but we do know that a lot of Hungarian communists were tasked by Comintern to go to Berlin after the fall of the Commune, where some of the reds compromised during the Hungarian Soviet Republic fled to. The common point in András and István ’s life was that they both worked for the German-owned film studio Ufa in the 1930s. According to a verbal account, István returned from Berlin as Ufa’s director in Budapest.186 (It is worth noting, though, that Ufa was becoming a mouthpiece of Nazi propaganda from the 1930s onwards.) Comintern primarily targeted artists and culture in its attempts to ensnare members of the intelligentsia sympathising with leftist ideas.187 Living a Bohemian life, Illés Bródy (István’s younger brother, who is likely to have been the one who crossed the border on the same day as István on a trade mission) travelled the western world in the 1930s, finally ending up in America. According to his brother, he was still allowed to across the border in 1947 without any issue. It makes one wonder what passport he held. Is it possible that after the fall of the Commune, Sándor Brody ’s sons were linked to the Soviet secret services through Comintern or another international network? This would explain the role of the Brody family after 1945, and why it was so difficult to track down information about them even despite the fact that István 185 The Last Mohican by György Márer: Amerikai Magyar Népszava, p. 10, 9 October 1981 186 Ibid. 187 Cf: Koch 2014 69
