George Soros, a Teenage Moment and 60 Minutes

George Soros on 60 Minutes, December 20, 1998

Of all the pernicious attacks on George Soros — a toxic mess of, among other things, anti-Semitism, paranoia, and conspiracy theories — one of the worst is a suggestion that as a boy in Nazi occupied Hungary he was a willing witness to Jewish persecution. At 88, Soros has now devoted fully half of his life to supporting open society and social justice around the world. As his publisher and friend, I can attest to what a remarkable man he is. He is also, in his way, a Holocaust survivor, During World War II, 400, 000 Jews in Hungary were murdered. The reason George, his mother and brother were not among them is told in his father Tivadar’s book, Masquerade: The Incredible Story of How George Soros’s Father Outsmarted the Gestapo.

Among Tivadar’s strategies was to put George in the protective custody of a person who would not be arrested. That meant that the teenager once saw an inventory of Jewish property being taken. It is briefly mentioned in the book. Somehow this found its way to the producers at 60 Minutes who raised the issue in an interview in the fall of 1998.

That’s where I come in. In an interview two years ago, I was asked to tell the story of that television piece and its aftermath. Here is what I said:

It was December 1998, just before Christmas at a cocktail party. I overheard Don Hewitt, executive producer of 60 Minutes telling several people with notable brio that in an interview to be aired that Sunday evening there was an exchange that could be explosive about George’s activities in World War II. PublicAffairs was working with George on his book “The Crisis of Global Capitalism” at that time. So the next morning I sent him a fax which said, in essence, “I gather there is a question and answer on 60 Minutes, which, depending on how it is framed, you are likely to hear about again.” George was flying to Sun Valley that day for the holiday. But when he arrived he sent me a very strong message saying that he knew what the issue must be and it was deeply unfair and hurtful in the way it was presented. The implication, it developed, was that George was somehow a willing witness to Nazi terror in Hungary, which was totally false.

Because Don’s wife Marilyn and I had been in graduate school together and were friends, I had his home number and even though it was Saturday morning, I called him. I related George’s appalled response and asked if there was anything that could be done given the seriousness of the assertion. Don said that the show was now finished and ready to air and that was more or less the conversation. Watching the show the next night I heard George say that when he was 14 his father had embedded him for protection from the Germans with a Hungarian official and that on a single occasion George was present when a Jewish family was answering a demand for a registry of their property. George was not involved and the only mention of the incident was in his father’s memoirs as a strand in the story of survival in war-time Budapest.

As soon as the show was over, Don called me and asked what I thought. I replied it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. Don said he had gone to the office and reviewed the raw footage and added 18 seconds to make clear what had happened as a distinctly minor moment. It was remarkable that Don had made the change. But even so, the trope was used by right-wing conspiracy mavens, particularly the followers of Lyndon LaRouche, an especially nasty extremist. All these years later, this gross falsehood about George continues to be repeated. In a lifetime of extraordinary contributions to social justice and human rights, this lie about George Soros must be refuted in the strongest possible terms.

I am telling this story now because the characters who accuse George of so many things — on the American right in this noxious political era and in today’s increasingly ugly Hungary — should be decisively countered. This is my contribution to that goal.