Communist Hungary made an honest life impossible, and Holocaust survivor Robert Ratonyi explains why you had to cheat, lie, and steal just to survive it. In his second conversation with Jenny Beth Martin, he picks up where the first left off: Stalin's three broken promises at Yalta, the salami tactics that turned a lost 1945 election into total communist control by 1948, five-year plans that were never met, meal tickets without meat, a graduation suit his mother paid for with alcohol stolen from the factory, and a bar mitzvah held behind pulled shades so the neighbors would not hear. He describes the secret police on every streetcar, six compulsory years of Russian, Voice of America with the volume down, and an aunt imprisoned for years over a smuggler's phone number. Then comes October 23, 1956, when he was an 18-year-old freshman in the student march that gave Hungary a few weeks of freedom, and the December night he crossed a frozen field and a swamp into Austria with 200 forints in his pocket, carrying a stranger's six-year-old daughter on his back to pay his way. Jenny Beth reads him the Democratic Socialists of America's promise of a life without capitalism, and he answers it. Robert Ratonyi is an engineer, a former investment banker, the author of From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom, and a longtime speaker for the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust. Learn more at teapartypatriots.org and jennybethshow.com.
Guest: Robert Ratonyi is a Holocaust survivor, born in Budapest in January 1938, who lived under Hungarian communism from the Soviet liberation until his escape to Austria in December 1956 at age 18. He went on to Canada and the United States, became an engineer and an investment banker, and returned to Hungary in 1993 and 1994 as one of seven American investment bankers the United States Agency for International Development sent to teach the newly freed country how to run its businesses. He is the author of From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom, with all royalties going to charity, and a longtime speaker for the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust. He lives in Atlanta.
Host: Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party movement and Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action. This is the second of two conversations with Robert Ratonyi; the first, on surviving the Holocaust as a child in Budapest, aired October 7.
Key topics:
• Yalta, January 1945: Stalin promised free elections and peace, and kept none of it
• Salami tactics: how a party that lost Hungary's 1945 election held total power by 1948
• Everything nationalized, every freedom gone, a picture of Stalin in every classroom
• Five-year plans never met, total censorship, and Voice of America with the shades pulled
• The class pyramid: party members and the secret police lived like kings
• Any shoes you wanted, as long as they were black
• Why you had to cheat, lie, and steal: the graduation suit and the stolen alcohol
• Meat once a week, meal tickets without meat, and the norm that rose every time it was met
• A bar mitzvah behind closed doors; spies on every streetcar
• Six compulsory years of Russian and the neighbor's library of Western books
• Bribing the doctors; the aunt imprisoned over a smuggler's phone number
• October 23, 1956: the student march, the 16 points, and the radio station
• The escape: a station master's train, a soldier's flashlight, and a child carried across the swamp
• Ratonyi's answer to the Democratic Socialists of America's promise that everything will be free
• Why America is exceptional because of its system, and why civics has to be taught again
• The day Americans risk their lives to leave this country
Timestamps:
00:18 — Robert Ratonyi returns: from the Holocaust to life under communism
01:50 — Yalta, January 1945: Stalin's three broken promises
05:53 — Salami tactics: the communists lose the 1945 election and take full control by 1948
07:52 — Everything nationalized: no speech, no religion, no travel, Stalin in every classroom
10:32 — The five-year plan, total censorship, and Voice of America with the shades pulled
12:37 — The class pyramid: party members and the secret police on top
14:08 — Teachers with doctorates: how the old educated class was punished
17:15 — Any shoes you wanted, as long as they were black
18:11 — Back to Hungary in 1993: what the corruption looked like from the inside
22:11 — You had to cheat, lie, and steal
22:41 — A graduation suit paid for with stolen alcohol
24:50 — Rationing: meat once a week, eggs and butter a luxury
25:49 — The norm: sealing vials, and the quota that rose every year
27:33 — A bar mitzvah behind pulled shades
30:16 — Spies everywhere: careful what you say on the streetcar
31:03 — Holocaust survivors who became communists
33:08 — Meal tickets with meat and without
35:25 — Six compulsory years of Russian
36:13 — Mrs. Klein's library: Huckleberry Finn and The Three Musketeers in Hungarian
40:12 — Health care under communism: hundreds of dollars for the doctors
42:29 — Numerus clausus: the 1920 law that kept his father-in-law out of college
44:28 — The Stakhanovite system
46:08 — The aunt imprisoned over a smuggler's phone number
47:32 — The House of Terror: the same building the Nazis used
48:15 — Why he wrote the book for his grandchildren
48:48 — No freedom of movement: a friend assigned a job 120 miles from home
51:19 — October 23, 1956: the march begins
56:04 — The 16 points at Parliament
58:19 — The radio station: the secret police open fire
01:00:47 — The revolt put down in November; freedom lasted a few weeks
01:02:42 — The armory opens: a gun, a signature, and his mother's reaction
01:04:46 — Asking his mother's permission to leave
01:06:52 — Bill says yes
01:07:38 — The station master's train
01:10:42 — Everybody out: a frozen field and a soldier with a flashlight
01:13:02 — The peasants waiting in the dark
01:15:06 — 200 forints, and Bill is lost
01:16:34 — The deal: carry the six-year-old girl and you do not pay
01:16:57 — The swamp, the mines, and the march to the border
01:20:18 — Halt: Austria
01:21:05 — Is there a Robert Reichmann here? Bill Fodor is looking for you
01:22:39 — Imagine life without capitalism: the Democratic Socialists of America's promise
01:26:09 — An exceptional country because of its system, not its people
01:27:19 — The media as the fourth leg
01:28:30 — What happens to the rest of the world when America no longer has liberty?
01:29:47 — Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA
01:32:55 — Iran, the Abraham Accords, and the Strait of Hormuz
01:38:01 — We have already had to fight this once in our lives
01:41:07 — There is nowhere left to escape to
01:41:36 — The day Americans risk their lives to leave
01:44:40 — Closing
Links: teapartypatriots.org and jennybethshow.com.