Júlia Rajk

Júlia Rajk (born Júlia Földi 9 February 1914 — 6 September 1981) was a Hungarian politician. She was married to László Rajk and after he was executed in 1949, she worked to have him rehabilitated and to preserve the legacies of opponents to the communist Hungarian regime.

Biography Júlia Földi was born in Budapest in 1914 to a family of Communist workers. During the 1930s, she lived in Paris and took part in the work of the International Red Aid. Földi returned to Hungary at the beginning of the Second World War. She met László Rajk as he was imprisoned in Budapest in 1941 and she served as courier between him and the then-clandestine Hungarian Communist Party. They married in 1946. From that date, she worked as a director of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarian women (MNDSZ). In June 1949, László Rajk, then serving as foreign minister, was arrested by the regime of Prime Minister Mátyás Rákosi and Interior Ministre János Kádár on charges of Titoisme.

Júlia Rajk was arrested at the same time and sentenced to five year imprisonment in March 1950. probably the Lóczy Institute, under the assumed name "István Kóvács" (the most common name in Hungary), and later adopted by Júlia's sister's family under the name of "István Györk". The event was a prelude to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 From then she worked at rehabilitating Imre Nagy, took part in the first NGO to be authorised in Hungary since 1951 (a dog shelter), and promoted access to abortion.

Besides her activism, she worked at the national archives of Hungary until she retired. She died of cancer in Budapest in 1981.

Posterity Hungarian historian Andrea Petö published a monograph and several research articles based on interviews of Júlia Rajk's son and part of her archives, as well as journal sources of the era.

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