Ferenc Rozsa

Rózsa, Ferenc 

Born Dec. 4, 1906, in Budapest; died there June 13, 1942. Figure in the Hungarian Communist movement.

Son of a servant, Rózsa was educated as construction engineer. As a student in Germany from 1924 to 1931, he worked with a socialist student group. He returned to Hungary in 1931, where he joined the Communist Party of Hungary (CPH) in 1932. From 1932 to 1935 he was a member of the editorial board of the newspaper Kommunist, and in 1935 he became a leader of the Hungarian Communist Youth League. In 1940 he became a member of the Central Committee and of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPH; he was in charge of organizing an antifascist popular front. On Feb. 1, 1942, he became the first editor of the illegal newspaper Szabad Nép, the central organ of the Hungarian CP. Rózsa was seized by Horthyites on June 1, 1942, and killed during interrogation.