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 fought in the Spanish Civil War; later he moved to the Soviet Union.

In 1946 he was elected deputy secretary and became the chairman of the party's Management Committee.

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] His son Vladimir was a colonel of the security police during the Rákosi era.