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New Novel Reveals Names of Betrayed Hungarian Heroes

A new novel, `Sword of the Turul,` by Catherine Eva Schandl, goes back in time to tell the true story of how the British-led anti-Nazi resistance in Hungary was imprisoned secretly by the NKVD and discarded and forgotten after World War II by British Intelligence. The only thing missing from the book is names. Now, in this new novel, the names of these valiant people are revealed - the Hungarian leader of her father Karoly?s resistance group, one of the group members who also ended up in Vladimir prison, and the arrested Dutch lieutenant who was working for Raoul Wallenberg.

`I am revealing these names because Hungary?s National Day of March 15 (war of independence) is approaching,` the author explains, `and Hungarians have a right to know about all their heroes and what really happened to them.` Karoly William Schandl, a Hungarian lawyer, was a survivor of almost 12 years in the Soviet prisons of Lubyanka, Lefortovo, and Vladimir. Prior to his official arrest by the NKVD/SMERSH on December 8, 1944, he was a member of a British led anti-Nazi resistance group, and lived across from Raoul Wallenberg?s Swedish Embassy in Budapest. In early December 1944 - south of Lake Velence - SMERSH arrested Karoly Schandl, along with a Dutch lieutenant who had been working for Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. British intelligence had ordered them to report to the Russians.

Karoly and Lt. Van der Waals were placed in Lubyanka and then Lefortovo prison. The leader of Karoly`s group, Gabor Haraszty (code name `Albert`), was a young Hungarian lawyer of Jewish origin who had become an officer of the British Intelligence Service. He too was later arrested by SMERSH. He did not survive.