Soros and the Nazis: The Whole Truth, In His Own Words

by Richard Poe Wednesday, August 2, 2006 3:40 pm Eastern Time

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It seems we have struck a nerve over at David Brock’s MediaMatters.org. Six days before the August 8 release of our forthcoming book The Shadow Party, Media Matters has fired off a screed more than 6,500 words in length purporting to discredit our research.

It accuses me and my co-author David Horowitz of “doctored quotes, shoddy scholarship, factual errors,” “baseless insinuations” and much more. Time and space do not permit an exhaustive, point-by-point refutation at this time — though, rest assured, it is in the works. [FULL REBUTTAL HERE, RP] For now, let me offer just a quick rebuttal to a single minor — yet richly illustrative — point.

The authors of the Media Matters piece, who identify themselves only as “D.B. & S.S.M.,” write:

“Echoing the rantings of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and his followers, David Horowitz and Richard Poe charge in their new book that George Soros was a Nazi “collaborator in fascist Hungary” and “survived [the Holocaust] by assimilating to Nazism” as a 14-year-old boy. …

“Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest. The unsourced smearing of Soros as a Nazi collaborator echoes the obscure anti-Semitic rantings of political extremist Lyndon LaRouche and his followers…” (1)

I direct my readers’ attention to the term “unsourced smearing of Soros.” By the term “unsourced” our accusers indicate that we provided no source for the information on Soros’ wartime activities. This is flatly untrue. The information comes from Soros’ own lips, from interview transcripts clearly cited and footnoted in the relevant passages of our book.

When the Nazis came in 1944, Soros’ father saved the family by splitting them up, providing them with false identities and bribing Hungarian Christians to take them in. Young Soros posed as the godson of a man named Baumbach, an official of Hungary’s fascist government.

In an April 15, 1993 interview on the PBS television show Adam Smith’s Money World, Soros explained that Baumbach’s “job was to take over Jewish properties, so I actually went with him and we took possession of these large estates. That was my identity. So it’s a strange, very strange life. I was 14 years old at the time.” (2) Connie Bruck, who interviewed Soros for The New Yorker in 1995, wrote that, “he posed as the son of a Hungarian government official, sometimes accompanying the official as he delivered deportation notices to Jews, or took possession of property owned by them.” (3)

On December 20, 1998, Soros had the following exchange with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes:

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes. (4)

We do not judge or condemn Mr. Soros for youthful actions taken under duress, and in fear for his life. We do note, however, that the choices he made reflected aspects of his character which would resurface in later years.

The choices facing young Soros were grim, but they were choices nonetheless. “Granted, Soros was only a teenager when he faced these trials, yet boys his age were fighting and dying all over Europe,” we wrote in The Shadow Party. (5) Indeed, boys as young as Soros commonly served in those years in underground resistance movements and partisan bands from icy Norway to sunbaked Crete. That path was open to Soros, if he chose it.

He chose a different path instead, murky, sinuous, and fraught with moral peril. Once embarked upon that path, he would never leave it. He walks it to this day. Therein lies his tragedy. George Soros was a man who dreamed dreams, amassed fortunes and reached out for greatness. Yet he failed, in the end, to scrape together the price of his own soul’s ransom.

by Richard Poe

August 2, 2006 03:40 PM ET

Cross-posted from ShadowParty.com 08.02.06

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NOTES

1. D.B. & S.S.M., “Echoing Lyndon LaRouche, Horowitz and Poe smear 14-year-old George Soros as Nazi `collaborator’; new book features doctored quotes, factual errors“, MediaMatters.org, 2 August 2006

2. Interview with George Soros, Adam Smith’s Money World, Public Broadcasting Service, 15 April 1993

3. Connie Bruck, “The World According to Soros”, The New Yorker, 23 January 1995, 58

4. George Soros interviewed by Steve Kroft, 60 Minutes, CBS, 20 December 1998

5. David Horowitz and Richard Poe, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party (Nelson Current, 2006), 80