Soros responds, then Peretz
Correspondence George Soros v. Martin Peretz
Only at TNR Online | Post date 02.09.07
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artin Peretz falsely accused me of having been a “young cog in the
Hitlerite wheel” (”Tyran-a-Soros,” February 12). I need to set the
record straight. In 1944, when the Nazis occupied Hungary, my father
arranged false identities for his family. He placed me with an
official of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture who claimed that I
was his godson. In return, my father arranged a false identity for
the official’s Jewish wife. In my capacity as 14-year-old godson, I
accompanied the official on a trip to inventory the estate of a
wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country. That is the episode
“60 Minutes” quizzed me about in the interview that Peretz quotes. In
the same interview I also said “I had no role in taking away that
property.” The facts are documented in Michael Kaufman’s biography,
(Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire). I have also
described the events at length in my own books and my father, Tivadar
Soros, gives an account of our adventures in 1944 in his book
Masquerade.
As regards my use of the term “de-Nazification,” I am not too proud
to admit this was a bad choice of words. I certainly do not put the
United States and Nazi Germany in the same moral category. What I
meant was that the United States needs to engage in a profound soul
searching about the harm the war in Iraq has done to others and
ourselves. Post-war Germany underwent such a process to its lasting
benefit. Perhaps truth and reconciliation would have been a more
felicitous expression, although it is also inaccurate because we need
to be reconciled with ourselves not the terrorists. For the record, I
am not equating the U.S. to South Africa either.
George Soros New York, New York
Martin Peretz Responds:
George Soros lived through the depredations of Nazi Germany. I only
learned of them from books and the oral testimonies of others. But
nearly every scholar of this darkest era describes the difficulty of
excavating the precise narrative of events from the trauma and chaos
that defined them. Soros points to his own father’s memoirs, for
instance, which paints a more complicated picture than the son’s
response. But this is quibbling. What provoked my article was not
Soros’s biography; it was his casual suggestion that America has “to
go through a certain de-Nazification process.” I am glad that my
article spurred him to abjure his words–and doubt that he would have
retracted them in its absence. If he hasn’t noticed, America is now
in the midst of an anguished debate about Iraq. No one in that debate
seems intimidated or has been arrested. About half the country seems
to be completely against the war. More are against it when you take
into account those who have some mixed feelings. Opposing the Bush
administration in this free country hardly qualifies as an act of
dissidence. Even after this clarification, I find his logic utterly
baffling and his assumptions no less pernicious.