Editing State Protection Authority (section)

===In Hungarian Revolution of 1956===
During the [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956]], elements of the insurgents tracked down and killed both known and suspected ÁVH officers and informants. When the Revolution began, a crowd of some thousand people attacked the police headquarters in [[Budapest]], shouting slogans such as "tear down the star!" and "free the prisoners!", referring to the enormous [[red star]] that stood on the building's roof, a symbol of [[communism]] and to the many prisoners kept inside. Fearing for the lives of both himself and his officers, the chief of the police let the crowd into the building, allowing them to take any [[political prisoner]]s they wanted.

During and after the siege of the Hungarian Working People's Party headquarters (in Republic Square, ''Köztársaság tér''), some members of the ÁVH were lynched, a fact later extensively used in party propaganda to back up the claim that the revolution was of a "fascistic, anti-Semitic and reactionary" nature.