During the war I was a chaplain, I had just been ordained as a priest. I was taken prisoner in the Carpathians. I saw all the horrors, young men with frozen limbs dying in the trenches. I was moved from one camp to another and starved along with other prisoners. We were all covered with vermin and many were dying of typhus. I lost my faith in God and when the revolution broke out I joined the Bolsheviks. I broke with my past completely. I was no longer a Hungarian, a priest, a Christian, even anyone's son. I became a Communist and have always remained one.[2]
The Soviets recognized that his passionate pride, intellect and charm were assets, and in 1932, he assumed the identity of Paul Hardt, a Central European intellectual, and travelled to England to control two British Foreign Office spies: John Herbert King and Ernest Holloway Oldham.
Another identity that he used in England was Mr Peters, an Austrian who had spent time in a monastery before becoming a captain in the Russian cavalry.
While in England he was involved with fellow spy the Irishman Brian Goold-Verschoyle who delivered documents to Maly from the Foreign Office given to him by John Herbert King.[5]
Final days
In 1937 as the Stalinist terror took hold, Soviet intelligence personnel working abroad became principal targets of suspicion and were subject to recalls to the Soviet Union. In June, Maly received orders from Moscow to return. He knew his background in the atmosphere of the time made his position particularly dangerous: 'I know that as a former priest I haven't got a chance. But I've decided to go there so nobody can say: "That priest might have been a real spy after all'".[6]
Maly returned to Moscow and worked at the Lubyanka.[citation needed] Any hope of returning to Europe was dashed with the defections of Ignace Reiss in July 1937 and Walter Krivitsky in October 1937.[citation needed]Alexander Orlov reports in the Secret History that Maly disappeared from his post in November 1937 but is contradicted in West's Crown Jewels, which cites a document that indicates that Maly was still at work on May 23, 1938.[citation needed] Although the exact date of Maly's arrest is unknown, it was probably after May 1938 and before Orlov's own defection to North America in July 1938.[citation needed]