He was born in 1904 in Abaújszántó to Jewish parents, in the Abaúj-Torna County of the Kingdom of Hungary, and became a Communist in the 1920s. He lived in Košice and Prague then. He fought in the Spanish Civil War; later he moved to the Soviet Union. He returned to Hungary in late 1944 alongside other Hungarian communists and became a member of the Central Committee, the Political Committee and the Secretariat of the Hungarian Communist Party from May 1945. In 1945 he became under-secretary of Home Affairs. In 1946 he was elected deputy secretary and became the chairman of the party's Management Committee.[1]
He was Minister of National Defence from 9 September 1948 to 2 July 1953. He was one of the main instigators during the Rákosi era.[clarification needed] In 1956 he was expelled from the party and convicted. He was released from prison in 1961 and spent his last years working as an editor and publisher in Budapest, where he died in 1965.[1]
