Holocaust survivor Robert Ratonyi was six years old when soldiers marched his mother out of a Budapest courtyard. Three years after October 7, he tells Jenny Beth Martin what happened to a Jewish child in Budapest in 1944 and what he says it has to do with Hamas today. Born in Budapest in 1938, the year of Kristallnacht, Ratonyi lost his father to a labor battalion in 1942. On October 10, 1944, soldiers took every adult in his building and left the children behind. A friend of his mother's walked him across a bombed city to his grandparents, and the family moved between the walled ghetto and the Swedish protected houses set up under Raoul Wallenberg until, too weak to walk, he was carried back into the ghetto on his grandfather's back. The Red Army reached the street on January 18, 1945. His mother came home in July. He has studied every genocide of the twentieth century and spent sixteen years telling Georgia students what he found. He explains the thin line he says runs through every human heart, why he says Hamas crossed it, and why the Constitution's divided power is the answer to the most dangerous thing in the world. Robert Ratonyi is the author of From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom and a speaker for the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust and the William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum. Learn more at teapartypatriots.org and jennybethshow.com.
Guest: Robert Ratonyi is a Holocaust survivor, born in Budapest in January 1938. His father was conscripted into a Hungarian labor battalion in 1942 and never returned; his mother was taken in October 1944 and survived a labor camp in Austria. He lived through the Budapest ghetto and the Swedish protected houses as a six-year-old, escaped Hungary after the 1956 uprising, reached the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by 1961, and built a career and a business in Atlanta. He has spoken to students for sixteen years on behalf of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust and the William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum, and is the author of From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom, whose royalties go to an educational charity.
Key topics:
• 1938: the Anschluss, Kristallnacht, and why his father decided there would be no more children
• Why Hungary joined Hitler, and why the Hungarian Holocaust did not begin until 1944
• 1942: his father conscripted into a labor battalion when Robert was four; he never saw him again
• Eichmann in Budapest, March 1944: the Jews of the provinces deported in six weeks, most to Auschwitz
• Yellow star houses, and the night of October 10, 1944, when soldiers took the adults and left the children
• Julia, his mother's friend, and the walk through a bombed-out Budapest to his grandparents
• The ghetto: twenty-five city blocks, a ten-foot wall, four gates, and a pile of jewelry on the sidewalk
• The Swedish Schutzpass issued under Raoul Wallenberg, and the cousin in an Arrow Cross uniform who got the family out of the ghetto
• The Arrow Cross raids: show the pass, hand over the jewelry, or be taken to the Danube
• The last room, on Kazinczy Street: ten people on the floor, no windows, and a fifteen-year-old cousin bartering for food without his yellow star
• Too weak to carry the grinder, then too weak to walk: carried back into the ghetto on his grandfather's back
• January 18, 1945: the soldiers at the window were Russian, and the crowd was shouting the word for bread
• July 1945: word that his mother had survived the labor camp at Lichtenwörth
• 34 genocides in the twentieth century, and the one thing Ratonyi says none of them had in common
• The thin line between good and evil in every human heart, and why he says Hamas crossed it on October 7
• Why he says the Nazis tried to hide their crimes and Hamas did not
• Sixteen years of speaking: small-town Georgia halls, the students the Breman Museum buses in every year, and the Atlanta students who go to Auschwitz after hearing him
• The endowment that now carries his name, and the Catholic school that opened an institute on the history of antisemitism
• Lord Acton, Martin Niemöller, and the lesson Ratonyi leaves every audience: you cannot be apathetic
• Why he says the Constitution's divided power is the answer to the most dangerous thing in the world
Timestamps:
00:00 — Cold open: three years after October 7, a Holocaust survivor
00:58 — Welcome; two episodes planned, the Holocaust first
01:48 — Born in January 1938, a bad year for a Jewish child in Europe: the Anschluss
03:37 — Kristallnacht, and why his father decided there would be no more children
05:49 — Germany invades Poland; why Hungary joined Hitler in 1940
07:20 — Labor battalions: his father conscripted in 1942, when Robert was four
08:36 — 1944: the Hungarian Jews untouched, until Hitler took over Hungary
09:46 — Eichmann in Budapest, March 1944; the deportations from the provinces
12:30 — The Arrow Cross puppet government
13:20 — Bombing by day and night, the cellar, and the yellow star houses
14:44 — October 10, 1944: the night soldiers took every adult and left the children
17:25 — Julia, and the walk across a bombed-out Budapest to his grandparents
19:40 — The ghetto: twenty-five blocks and a ten-foot wall
21:02 — The wicker basket and the grinder; seven moves ahead
22:07 — The cousin in an Arrow Cross uniform, and the Swedish Schutzpass
23:24 — Raoul Wallenberg and the protected houses
26:20 — The Arrow Cross raids; his grandparents caught, and escaped
28:02 — The four gates of the ghetto, and a pile of jewelry on the sidewalk
30:49 — 34 Kazinczy Street: ten people in one room, no windows
31:34 — Cousin Mike, fifteen, out without his yellow star to barter for food
32:37 — The Arrow Cross comes for money and jewelry
33:18 — The Danube, and the Shoes Memorial
35:46 — The Red Army encircles Budapest; the plan to blow up the ghetto; Wallenberg's warning
36:54 — Liberated on January 18, 1945, a week after his seventh birthday
37:35 — The last move: carried back into the ghetto on his grandfather's back
38:55 — The soldiers were Russian, and the crowd was shouting the word for bread
40:19 — July 1945: his mother survived
40:42 — Jenny Beth Martin: October 7, and the blaming of Israel
42:06 — 34 genocides in the twentieth century; the Holocaust was the third largest
44:30 — Good and evil in every human heart, and the thin line
45:38 — The one moral difference: the Nazis tried to hide their crimes; Hamas did not
47:11 — Strict laws, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
48:36 — The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust, and the small-town halls
49:59 — The Breman Museum buses students in; sixteen years of speaking
50:48 — Voices of Resilience: the Atlanta students who go to Auschwitz after hearing him
52:43 — Who paid for it, and the student who went home and talked to her mother
57:04 — The endowment that carries his name
59:16 — "From the river to the sea" on campus; Hungary's demonstration for Israel
01:02:09 — Hearts and souls have not changed; laws that are enforced
01:03:35 — Nostra Aetate, 1965
01:04:25 — A Catholic school's institute on the history of antisemitism
01:08:42 — Laws so that nothing slips through; the fine line in each of us
01:09:12 — Lord Acton: power tends to corrupt; why the Constitution divides power
01:11:24 — Jenny Beth Martin: good and evil is human nature, in the Old and New Testaments
01:12:48 — The Ten Commandments against the one communist commandment
01:13:15 — Martin Niemöller: first they came for the socialists
01:15:05 — The lesson: you cannot be apathetic
01:15:46 — A life mission, and the American dream
01:17:53 — Thank you; the escape and communism in a later episode
01:18:18 — The host's close: 1956, Canada, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Atlanta
01:19:22 — The book, and where the royalties go
01:20:32 — Credits
Links mentioned:
jennybethshow.com
teapartypatriots.org