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Just a century ago, Lajos Onódy was born in 1920, whose name is misspelled by Ónody and Onód. The young Onódy worked in the Ganz factory as an auxiliary worker, then as an electrician and then as a technical officer.
During Sagittarius’ reign of terror, he acted as a hero: rescuing communists, deserters, Jews (proving to men that they were essential workers for military production while hiding their wives at a friend’s house), but also playing a role in the sabotage of machine delivery from the Ganz factory in Germany.
He was arrested by the Gestapo at the end of 1944 and sentenced to death, but with the arrival of Soviet troops the sentence was no longer served.
From Little Royal to Honey Teddy Bear
After the war, Onódy’s CV opened the door to a new power. He first became the head of the wholesale business of the Extra Candy and Chocolate Factory, and in 1949 he was entrusted with the organization of the National Buffet Company, which was in charge of operating the espresso bars and nationalized buffets. The company began a dynamic development and in 1953 it was transformed into a restaurant and buffet company.
State megacities included the Little Royal, the later Budapest Dance Palace on the site of the Moulin Rouge, the Opatija, the Gresham, the Emke, the Savoy, the Anna Presszó on Váci Street, the Buddha Rose Garden, the Apostolok Restaurant, the Baross Cafe, the Yerevan and the Margaret Island Casino Restaurant. In its heyday, the company also operated hotels, motels, bars and inns on the shores of Lake Balaton.
In the 1950s, the Honey Teddy became popular for its excellent baked goods and cold cooking. By the 1960s, the company had grown into one of the largest national catering companies, with nearly 400 smaller and larger plants and thousands of employees.
Onódy was a generous and imaginative leader who built his relationship system with delicious cold bowls, potions, and gifts.
According to historian John Tischler, he was a typical “outgoing man” who could take advantage of the bureaucratic rigidity of the system, for which he was given all the tools and possibilities.
Soccer and hunting
In addition to hospitality, he also established himself in the soccer and hunting communities. In 1953, he became the head of the FTC’s Kinizsi football department, then known as Budapest. He was referred to as one of his great “glassistas” when, in 1955, at the Easter tournament in Vienna, instead of the red and white color of Kinizsi, he sent footballers onto the field in the traditional green and white Fradi jersey.
In the early 1960s, he founded the hunting companies Teddy Bear and Diána in Kisnánás, Mátra, which had fewer but more influential members. One had five members and the other seven members – in addition to Onódy, Sándor Gáspár, member of the Political Committee of the Hungarian Socialist People’s Party, Ferenc Nezvál, Minister of Justice, József Szalay, President of the Supreme Court, Géza Szénási Chief Prosecutor, Márton Bodonyi, President of the Supreme Military Court and Kelemen Endre, one of the best known forensic experts.
Internal enemy groups
There were also foreign policy reasons behind the outbreak of the Onódy affair: In 1964, the leaders of the hard-line Soviet party Leonid Brezhnev removed Nikita Khrushchev from the Communist Party. At that time, the leaders of the Hungarian fraternal party also took a step forward: the Political Committee accepted the agreement signed by Mihály Korom. On the activities of certain internal hostile groups proposed decision in the written presentation on
The Political Committee approves the implementation of non-extensive administrative measures to halt the recovery of hostile individuals and groups from the right and the left due to the serious suspicion that they commit acts in violation of the laws of the People’s Republic of Hungary.
In September 1964, Onódy traveled to the United States to study at the World’s Fair. He also received news that investigators were constantly being questioned at his company, but believed that only the case of thieves who had previously been silenced was being investigated. At that time, several people had already warned him by phone about Budapest not to return. When he got home to Vienna, he encountered László Papp’s boxer and trainer, Zsigmond Adler, allegedly Lappi Papp knelt in front of him and begged him to stay outside. However, he returned home, but he also underestimated the importance of the police chief ordering the “incorporation” of a police detective into the company.
Photo: Népszabadság, November 2003 / Arcanum Digital Science Library
Lajos Onódy, one of the main causes of the “recovery”, was arrested on October 30, 1964. They took him out of his house in handcuffs and demonstratively took him to his company in the same way to inspect his office.
Gold watch for 50th birthday.
On December 5, 1964, Népszabadság announced that the Budapest Police Headquarters was investigating Lajos Onódy, director of the Restaurant and Buffet Company and eleven of his associates, for crimes against social property.
The investigation found that the defendants swindled, embezzled, damaged the social property entrusted to them for years and caused nearly 400,000 florins in damage to the national economy through their acts of conspiracy.
After three months of investigation, on February 1, 1965, Onódy and eleven of his associates were charged with embezzlement, fraud and dishonest treatment. The public hearing began on February 22 at the Metropolitan Court. After 19 days of trial, on March 20, Onódy was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. The court determined that the defendants in a criminal association caused almost 400 thousand florins in damage to social property. For this, Onódy responds together with the members of the criminal association for more than 230 thousand florins, and only Onódy is responsible for the amount greater than 31,000 florins. According to the reasoning of the verdict, the condemned tried to eliminate the significant deficit caused by consumption without compensation, partly at the cost of the grave, with fictitious charges. The court also found a prohibited gift: Onódy gave a gold watch on his 50th birthday, and when he furnished his apartment, he paid him 10,000 florins less than the actual costs. The court also ordered the defendants to pay compensation for damage to social property. Thus, Onódy – jointly with other defendants – was ordered to pay 138 thousand florins.
The July 17, 1965 issue of Népszabadság reported on page 14 that, on appeal, the Supreme Court had ruled in the case of Lajos Onódy and his accomplices. The brief report omitted, apparently for lack of space, that the Supreme Court of Second Instance acquitted him of the fraud charge and ruled with greater leniency on various other charges. However, the court still sentenced him to six and a half years in prison.
“There is nothing more to report here”
The events were also dealt with by the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist People’s Party: three strong members of the party, Béla Biszku and Mihály Korom, secretaries of KB, and János Pap, Minister of the Interior, were delegates to “explore” the matter. At the KB meeting on March 11, 1965, Biszku, the main inventor of the conceptual lawsuit, saw the world as simple:
Onódy was one of those party members and he became a hard-working and performance-oriented director who gradually slipped and committed crimes..
The general opinion within the party was summarized by Géza Révész, former Defense Minister:
I don’t want to discuss the criminal process here, but the fact that Onódy was abroad twenty-six times, in the United States and Switzerland, I don’t know where or where he brought the cars, I only read it in the last announcement of the trial in Népszabadság, ¿¿ It is not like this? it means there is no order somewhere.
János Kádár, first secretary of the Central Committee, spoke several times during the meeting, who would have preferred to sweep the whole Onódy case under the rug:
the interest of the system demands that we not give it great importance.
Why not? The first man in the group replied:
There are a lot of people involved here. And I say something: we no longer inherit them from capitalism. Not even Onódy. These are our self-taught people. This is the painful and bitter part of the matter.
At the end of the meeting, Kádár, as if The witness I would have been in one of the cut scenes from the movie
We can’t do about it, and it’s a luck and a good thing to make the criminal part of it suck, shit. Unfortunately! I’ve already been so mad, an honest TSZ chief accountant only fools more than these 23 people together. This is the criminal side of the matter. This is going its own way, and the only thing the Central Committee needs to know about it is that the law will be fully enforced. Whoever has committed a crime will be punished. There is nothing more to report here.
Margit Bara’s drag
For the purposes of power, it was not classified in the media. In order to expose Onódy in public, the fact that wild orgies were taking place in the nightclubs under his control were carried out with the participation of high officials and young artists.
One of the targets was actress Margaret Bara, who was rumored to be dancing naked on the table and guests licking chocolate from her naked body. The art world did not support Bara.
Only Ádám Szirtes defended his defense, who, outraged by what he had done with his colleague, ran to the competent district committee of the party and cut his membership booklet on the table.
It is characteristic of the absurdity of the case that while Onódy and Bara did not even know each other, all the party and state leaders involved “escaped” from their relationship with the main culprit.
Although the caterer refuted the rumors, Bara, who was in an unworthy and humiliating position, definitively abandoned the acting career in 1977 and retired. Until his events, until his death in October 2016, no one apologized to him.
Onódy served four years and four months of his sentence in the Star Prison in Szeged. As a prisoner, he worked at the Alföld Furniture Factory, where his lungs and eyes were damaged by the inhaled chemicals, he lost several teeth and became diabetic. On February 28, 1969, he was paroled as a human shipwreck. He was hospitalized for six weeks and then retired at the age of 49. In 1980, the Presidential Council of the People’s Republic of Hungary exempted him from the disadvantages of having a criminal record.
Epilogue
The Onódy case was taboo in the Hungarian press until the change of regime. So much so that in an interview with him in 1989, the journalist did not even mention the lawsuit, in fact:
He was a celebrated leader as CEO of the Restaurant and Buffet Company, a very experienced cadre. I suppose it could often have been in the company of famous leaders of the time.
Even after the regime change, he failed to overturn the verdict that was imposed on him in a conceptual lawsuit constructed by “celebrity leaders.” He died in February 1996 at the age of seventy-six.
At the initiative of the Jad Vasem Institute in Jerusalem, a year before his death, Lajos Onódy was included in The Truth of the World on March 23, 1995, in recognition of his Jewish rescue efforts during World War II.
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