Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

"Enemies of the People" is the seventh book by Kati Marton, distinguished, award-winning former news correspondent for the ABC, and NPR, networks. She has previously penned New York Times best sellers Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History; and The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World. She is also author of Wallenberg: Missing Hero; The Polk Conspiracy; and A Death in Jerusalem. Marton, it turns out, is the daughter of Hungarian journalists of Jewish descent. For this book, she has delved into the files of that small country's former Communist government's once awesome secret police - apparently, with 21,000 employees, that organization dominated its society as brutally as the previous East German Communist government's famous, feared Secret Police, the Stasi; and discovered the truth about a black period in her childhood, when both her parents were arrested, and in jail, charged with spying for the United States. The author also conducted dozens of interviews among her parents' former friends, co-workers, and lovers, behind the former Iron Curtain, that kept East Europe in isolation from the world.

The author was warned: "You are opening Pandora's box," when she filed to see the voluminous secret police files kept on her parents, still kept in Budapest. But she did. She discovered a lot she never knew about the pair; their anti-Nazi activities during the German occupation of World War II; their love affairs; their struggles with the Communist apparatchiks; their lives, surrounded by Communist informers, even down to her childhood French nanny.

For, make no mistake about it: the Communist apparatchiks hated her parents: they were of high bourgeois background, well-educated and -cultivated, owners of beautiful furniture and pictures, and excellent bridge players that kept them popular at the British and American embassies. They were attractive people, who knew how to dress with style and taste, were fluent in French, English and German, drove a white Studebaker convertible, the only car even remotely like it in Hungary (the authorities would seize it, paint it black, and use it as a state car after their arrest). Furthermore, they were prominent; they had good jobs, he working for Associated Press (AP); she for United Press International (UPI), its chief competitor. The Hungarians were also anti-Semitic, whether they admitted it or not, and the Martons were Jews: the writer's maternal grandparents died at Auschwitz. Finally, unfortunately, the author's parents were also arrogant; they considered themselves untouchable, due to their wealth, charm and connections; he, at least, got a little reckless.

The apparatchiks had been watching the pair a long time; finally Endre (Andrew) Marton gave them the excuse they'd been hoping for, and the Secret Police pounced, charged the pair with spying, leaving their two little girls crying alone in the street. The girls were eventually fostered out (the government had been intending to seize and institutionalize them, at one of their propaganda mills/orphanages). However, family connections were able to find and pay a foster family; these same connections were finally able to effect the freeing of the pair, and the family's departure from Hungary, to the greener, safer shores of suburban Washington, D.C. There Andrew Marton achieved the exalted status of AP's Chief State Department Correspondent. And the Hungarian Communist government continued to pursue the pair, hoping, unrealistically enough, to turn them into pro-Hungarian spies.

It's an absorbing, thrilling true story, played on a world-wide stage, among people it's easy to like; yet it's an important first-person historical document, written by an eyewitness: the Marton family continues its record of high achievement. Well, I am told that, years ago, a sign hung in the commissary of that Hollywood dream factory, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM): "It isn't enough to be Hungarian. You must also work." The Martons, it appears, like many others of those legions of talented Hungarian Jews who came over here, nine of which Marton wrote about in her previous book, did, and do.

Funny, willy-nilly, I am what's known around New York and environs as a red diaper baby, the daughter of Reds with more naïve aspirations than sense, and, if nothing else, was raised in a politically-aware household. Even as a small child, I was aware of World War II, and the post-war Russian invasion and occupation of the East European countries. The 1953 death of that feared, crazed Russian tyrant, Josef Stalin, and his 1956 secret denunciation by Khrushchev, to the Russian Politburo. The 1956 Hungarian uprising and its crushing by Russian tanks. Reading Marton's account of these familiar events of our childhoods is like seeing them turned inside out, viewed from the opposite way they were viewed in the house where I grew up: I must say Marton's point of view makes more sense to me than my parents' ever did. Though my father, who was, after all, no fool, used always to tell me the Hungarians were remarkable people among East Europeans, the smartest, the best cooks; the women the most beautiful, the best-dressed, and the cleverest at utilizing some herb they'd found in the woods to beautify their skins (see Helena Rubinstein!). Seems to me that Marton's outstanding book goes to prove virtually every word.

This is the fascinating story of a famous Hungarian couple who were caught up in the politics of terror and paranoia that were the reality of Communist Hungary from just after World War II until the family was finally able to leave the country in 1957.

Endre and Ilona Marton (who were already survivors of World War II, especially remarkable because of their Jewish ancestry - one set of parents perished in Auschwitz) worked as journalists for the Associated Press and United Press (respectively) during the early critical days of the Cold War and were often the only line of information for "the West" present in the country. They lived in open defiance of the Soviet system and this is a detailed account of their story - based on the massive files collected by the Hungarian secret police and made available to their daughter, now a journalist herself and the author of this book. They were renowned for their excellent and honest journalism during very tough times and had much interaction with Western journalists and embassy staff - both of which brought them under intense scrutiny from the Hungarian secret police and eventually led to their arrest - leaving their children in the care of strangers for a considerable length of time.

It's really interesting to have this story told by this couple's daughter, whose own memories enhance the narrative. I'm amazed at her objectivity during the bulk of the story - the story of her family's life in Hungary. Learning the story of her parents and their journalistic integrity helps make sense of her amazing ability to not let her own feelings and biases get in the way of this important story. She skillfully weaves together a narrative based on the secret police files, her parents' own memoirs, extensive interviews with others wrapped up in the story and, of course, her own memories. The story is gripping and moving and culminates in her parents' eyewitness view of the tragic Hungarian revolution of 1956. This is a significant piece of history and a great read in its own right.

The end chapters, telling of her family's life after moving to America and her own work in putting together the story, are interesting, but don't match the quality of the rest of her book. These chapters are less objective and at times quite frustratingly emotional - both in trying to justify her parents' behavior (their humanness needs no excuse - her writing on them is perhaps better than she realizes!) and in making judgments about those, especially during their time in America, who were suspicious of them (the simpler descriptions of their thoughts and actions are more powerful when the readers are free to draw their own conclusions).

On the whole, a very powerful and worthwhile read!

Part memoir, part historical narrative, Kati Marton spins a fantastic tale of her family's courageous journey to America.

Her parents were international journalists in Budapest behind the Iron Curtain after WWII. Their reporting eventually led to them being imprisoned when Marton was a young girl. The author doesn't just relate her memories of the time, which are sometimes flawed because she was so young, she digs deeper. After her parents died several years ago, Marton began searching, obsessively as she states,for what really happened during those years. What she discovers is beyond anything imaginable. The result is a narrative filled in with historical documents, redacted goverment security files, FBI files, secret papers from Budapest and eye witness accounts of the nightmare the Martons endured. It gives readers an up close and personal glimpse of what those behind the Iron Curtain faced.

The author does a remarkable job of mixing personal observations, emotions and history. We know what she is going through as she is uncovering the hidden truths, and we know what she felt as a child when her parents just "disappeared" from her life for months. It is well balanced, thoughtful, and informative, but most of all, it is a story of a family's strength of heart that helped them survive and led them to freedom.

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