索罗斯:活着是第一要务

apollochil

我的人生理念的形成深受个人经历影响。我的个性成长期是在1944年德国占领匈牙利时。那时我还不到14岁，突然之间，只因是犹太人就要面对被驱逐和被杀害的可能。幸亏父亲对这一动荡早有准备。

　　第一次世界大战爆发时，父亲是一个雄心勃勃的年轻人，自愿参加了奥匈联军，结果被俄国人俘虏，送往西伯利亚。在那里，他成了战俘们自办报纸的编辑，后来被选为战俘的代表。他组织了一个越狱小组，计划做一个木筏，顺着河道漂往大海。但他的地理知识不够，不知道西伯利亚所有的河都流向北冰洋。他们漂泊了几个星期后不得不用几个月才穿过针叶林带回到文明世界。

　　父亲回家后完全变了一个人，他失去了雄心抱负，只希望享受人生。他传给孩子们的价值观与我们生活的那个年代完全脱节。

　　1944年德国占领匈牙利时，父亲立刻意识到这是非常时期，通常的规则不再适用。他发誓帮助家人渡过难关，在这个“不正常的情形”下。他必须要采取一些行动，这在平时是不诚实甚至违法的，但纳粹的入侵使这样做成了正义的。

　　为了确保我不会被纳粹当局带走，父亲想方设法接触到一位匈牙利高层，让我扮作匈牙利农业部的非犹太官员的教子。父亲还为我购买了假的身份证件，这些是我生存的关键。

　　纳粹将分发驱逐通知的任务交给布达佩斯犹太委员会，委员会又将这项可憎的任务交给了儿童，我就是其中之一。我接到一些写有人名的小纸条，纸条上的人务必在次日前往某处报到。父亲看到这些名单时，表情很痛苦，他意识到纳粹正在围捕犹太人中的精英。他让我送这些通知时告诉每个人这是驱逐通知。我遵照父亲的叮嘱，但发现有些人并不准备躲避纳粹。后来，这些犹太精英大都被带到了奥斯威辛集中营。

　　父亲还为其他一些人准备了假身份证，有钱的付了钱，没钱的他免费帮忙。他们大都幸存了下来，这是我父亲一生中最自豪的事。

　　不管父亲有着怎样的生活态度。他教会了我最重要的一课——活着是第一要务。第二次世界大战后期，父亲每天都冒着生命危险生活。这让我相信，其他的风险也是值得尝试的，但不要把一切东西都拿来冒险，那是不切实际的，更是没有必要的。在后来的职业生涯中，父亲还使我领悟到，认知与现实之间存在着差距，正是这一点使我对金融市场有了更好的认识，先是作为证券分析家。后来又成为对冲基金管理者。

源济

ranchgirl

活着是第一要务

bigbadwolf

回复 1# apollochil


    1934? not 1944.

ranchgirl

回复 4# bigbadwolf

After the German defeat at Stalingrad on the eastern front in 1942-1943, a battle in which Hungarian units suffered tremendous losses, Admiral Miklos Horthy and Prime Minister Miklos Kallay recognized that Germany would likely lose the war. With Horthy's tacit approval, Kallay sought to negotiate a separate armistice for Hungary with the western Allies. In order to forestall these efforts, German forces occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. Horthy was permitted to remain Regent, but Kallay was dismissed and the Germans installed General Dome Sztojay, who had previously served as Hungarian minister to Berlin and was fanatically pro-German, as prime minister. Sztojay committed Hungary to continuing the war effort and cooperated with the Germans in their efforts to deport the Hungarian Jews.

In April 1944, Hungarian authorities ordered Hungarian Jews living outside Budapest (roughly 500,000) to concentrate in certain cities, usually regional government seats. Hungarian gendarmes were sent into the rural regions to round up the Jews and dispatch them to the cities. The urban areas in which the Jews were forced to concentrate were enclosed and referred to as ghettos. Sometimes the ghettos encompassed the area of a former Jewish neighborhood. In other cases the ghetto was merely a single building, such as a factory.

In some Hungarian cities, Jews were compelled to live outdoors, without shelter or sanitary facilities. Food and water supplies were dangerously inadequate; medical care was virtually non-existent. Hungarian authorities forbade the Jews from leaving the ghettos and police guarded the perimeters of the enclosures. Individual gendarmes often tortured Jews and extorted personal valuables from them. None of these ghettos existed for more than a few weeks and many were liquidated within days.

In mid-May 1944, the Hungarian authorities, in coordination with the German Security Police, began to systematically deport the Hungarian Jews. SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann was chief of the team of "deportation experts" that worked with the Hungarian authorities. The Hungarian police carried out the roundups and forced the Jews onto the deportation trains. In less than two months, nearly 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary in more than 145 trains. Most were deported to Auschwitz, but thousands were also sent to the border with Austria to be deployed at digging fortification trenches. By the end of July 1944, the only Jewish community left in Hungary was that of Budapest, the capital.

In light of the worsening military situation and facing threats (from Allied leaders) of war crimes trials, Horthy ordered a halt to the deportations on July 7, 1944. In August, he dismissed the Sztojay government and resumed efforts to reach an armistice, this time with the Soviet Union whose army was on Hungary's borders. Horthy had begun final negotiations with Soviet army commanders by mid-October, when the Germans sponsored a coup d'etat. They arrested Horthy and installed a new Hungarian government under Ferenc Szalasi, the leader of the fascist and radically antisemitic Arrow Cross party.

During the Szalasi regime, Arrow Cross gangs perpetrated a reign of arbitrary terror against the Jews of Budapest. Hundreds of Jews, both men and women, were violently murdered. Many others died from the brutal conditions of forced labor to which the Arrow Cross subjected them.

In November 1944, the Arrow Cross regime ordered the remaining Jews of Budapest into a ghetto which, covering an area of 0.1 square miles, became temporary residence to nearly 70,000 people. Several thousand Budapest Jews were also marched on foot under Hungarian guard to the Austrian border during November and December 1944. Many who were too weak to continue marching in the bitter cold were shot along the way.

In January 1945, with Soviet forces already in the Pest section of Budapest, Hungary signed an armistice. Soviet forces liberated the Buda section of the city on February 13, 1945. Soviet troops drove the last German units and their Arrow Cross collaborators out of western Hungary in early April 1945.

Of approximately 825,000 Jews living in Hungary in 1941, about 63,000 died or were killed prior to the German occupation of March 1944. Under German occupation, just over 500,000 died from maltreatment or were murdered. Some 255,000 Jews, less than one-third of those who had resided within enlarged Hungary in March 1944, survived the Holocaust. About 190,000 of these were residents of Hungary in its 1920 borders.

ranchgirl

Hungary after the German occupation

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005458

bigbadwolf

回复 5# ranchgirl


    多谢！俺误以为匈牙利和奥地利早就被德国占领了呢。虽然德国在波兰杀了很多犹太人，但在匈牙利的暴行还没有比日本人更恶劣。

大牛Steve