Holocaust Survivor: He Was Six When Soldiers Marched His Mother Away | Robert Ratonyi

[00:00:00] Three years ago today, on October 7th, Israel was attacked with the worst terrorist attacks it ever experienced. And just a few weeks ago, we remembered the terrorist attacks that happened in our country on September 11th. It's been 25 years since those attacks for us, three years for Israel with these attacks. Today, we're joined by a man who survived the Holocaust. And he's going to talk to us about

[00:00:30] about that experience, surviving the Holocaust, and also what he thinks now looking at what has happened in recent years in Israel. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and this is The Jenny Beth Show.

[00:00:58] Welcome to The Jenny Beth Show. Today, we're joined by Robert Ratonyi, who survived the Holocaust. And he is a Jewish man who lives in Atlanta. And he's going to be talking to us about that experience, but also about the experience of the Israeli people just experienced three years ago today. Robert, thank you so much for joining me. Robert Ratonyi, The Jenny Beth Show, Robert Ratonyi, The Jenny Beth Show, July 11th, 2020

[00:01:25] So you have had quite an amazing life. And we're going to talk to you about your life in two different episodes. Today, we are focusing on what happened in your childhood during the Holocaust. And later, we'll be talking about what you experienced under communism as well. But tell me about the beginning of your life.

[00:01:51] Well, and you tell me if you think I'm going into too much detail because I was born in January 11, 1938, which was a bad year for a Jewish child to be born in Europe.

[00:02:05] Why? Because two significant events happened in 1938. The first one was in March when Hitler decided to annex Austria into the Third Reich. And it was called the Anschluss in German.

[00:02:23] And the posters were all over Vienna announcing this event and the picture of Hitler. And the caption says, one nation, one country, one Führer. That's part of my presentation that I introduced this event.

[00:02:45] And 97% of the Austrian voted for the Anschluss. So, and when Hitler came into Vienna, he was just cheered by tens and hundreds of thousands of people. So, it was a welcoming thing for the Austrians. But for Europe, that should have been a signal that he has intentioned. He's not going to stop annexing just one country that happened to be right next to him.

[00:03:14] And that he's going to go further than that. And particularly for the Jewish people, because this happened in 1938. And by this time, the Nazis were in charge for five years. And it had a lot to do with my life, that particular event and the subsequent event that took place in November of that year, November 9th and November 10th. What's called Kristallnacht, or in English we refer to this as the Knights of the Broken Glass.

[00:03:43] And what happened, there was a Pogrom that was initiated by the Nazis in Austria and Germany to riot in every major city. But the biggest riots took place in Berlin and in Vienna, the two capitals of those two countries. And during that riot, about 7,000 Jewish businesses were burned.

[00:04:12] A hundred synagogues, the businesses were destroyed, but about a hundred synagogues were burned. And 30,000 Jewish men were deported. They were deported into the very first concentration camps that Hitler set up. 30,000. 30,000. Wow. And that was a signal. And was born in that year. And it was shortly after that.

[00:04:42] And I learned that much, much later from my mother when my father told her that they got married just a year before that. And I was born literally a year later. And my mother confessed to me with regret in her voice that, you know, your father told me that I cannot get pregnant anymore and have more children. And that's why I'm the only child.

[00:05:11] Now, to put that in perspective, my mother was one of 10 children and my father was one of nine. So, I had a huge family. And I always regretted that I had no siblings. But that's why. So, the impact of what happened in 1938 has a lot to do with what happened on the road to the Jewish population of the rest of Europe.

[00:05:37] But that's how it started, 1938. And then, you know, what happened in 1939? Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. And just a quick history, the Hungarians decided to become an ally of Germany in 1940. Now, why did they do that?

[00:06:02] Well, it's not because they were thrilled about Hitler, although there were a lot of anti-Semites in Hungary, always have been. And there was a relationship between Hungary and Germany going back to World War I, during which Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory and one-third of its population. There was about five million people.

[00:06:28] Today, those people live in Romania, what's called the Transylvania portion. This was the western part of Romania. These were ethnic Hungarians. And Hungary lost all of that. And we were hoping that if they thought by 1940 that Hitler is going to win the war. So, it was a good bet. It was really just a bet. It said, we're going to join them and support the Germans, and we're going to get back our territory.

[00:06:55] So, that's why the Hungarian Jewish situation, the Holocaust, did not happen until the very end of the war, 1944, because of this allied relationship.

[00:07:09] But I grew up, and what happened in 1944 is that the Hungarian government decided to provide workers and labor for the German army. And they started to conscript Jewish men into labor battalions.

[00:07:34] And I was four years old in 1942 when my father was conscripted into a labor battalion and later on ended up in various concentration camps, and I never saw him again. So, in 1942, my mother was there left alone. And you were four. And I was four years old. And so, that's how my childhood started out.

[00:08:02] And then, I'm going to jump ahead to 1944. Two years later, of course, things completely changed because June 6th, I guess it was in 1944, when the Allies landed in Normandy. I'm maybe not correct with the date, but I think it was. Yes. So, that the real war began. Right.

[00:08:31] And, but for some reason, Hungary, the Hungarian Jews were not touched. Well, by that time, 1944, millions of Russian Jews, Polish Jews, and Jews in occupied territory by the German were killed in the Nazi killing fields. And the Hungarian Jews, as I did the research, of course, I did a lot of research, a lot of reading and books and whatnot.

[00:09:00] The Hungarian Jewish leadership knew what was going on in the rest of Europe, but they were hoping that the war would end before they would come for us. And they were wrong. Because what happened, Hitler got upset with the leadership in Hungary that they weren't providing sufficient resources to help them with the war.

[00:09:24] And he decided to actually occupy Hungary or take over the leadership of Hungary in March of 1944. And that's when the Hungarian, the Holocaust really took place. And what he did was he sent Adolf Eichmann, who was then the head of the Nazi Gestapo, a well-known name in history.

[00:09:53] He sent Eichmann to Budapest in March of 1944 with one instruction. He says, you have to finish the final solution in Hungary. Hungary, Hungary by then, the Jewish population swollen to approximately 800,000 because a lot of Jews tried to escape to Hungary from the northern countries.

[00:10:18] And the Hungarian Jews who were there thought that they're going to be saved because they thought the war was going to be over. Well, it didn't. So the two phases to that Holocaust, the Hagia Holocaust, phase one was when in six weeks, in early summer, June, July, they decided to deal with the Jewish population that lived in the provinces and smaller towns.

[00:10:48] Budapest had more than 200,000 Jews there. And that was a more difficult job to get them, get hold of those Jews. And that's where the Jewish leadership was. So they decided to go for the smaller cities and villages where, you know, small number of Jews were. But they organized a major effort.

[00:11:10] And within six weeks, close to 600,000, that's like 75% of the Jewish population or 6%, they rounded them up in every city, every town, every village, and jammed them into cattle carts and deported them out of the country. And of these people, 90% ended up in Auschwitz.

[00:11:38] Now, what happened to us? I told you we had a very big family. I had all these uncles and aunts on both sides of my family. And many of them did not live in Budapest. They lived outside in smaller towns. And they were caught up in this.

[00:11:57] My mother knew, of course, that some of her sisters, brothers, and on my father's side, my uncles were caught up in it and they were deported. But she didn't tell me anything. I was six years old then. And I knew nothing about it. But that was the phase one of the Hungarian Holocaust.

[00:12:19] Then the phase two started when Hitler decided to change the government of Hungary and put in a puppet government that was called the Arrow Cross government. Literally, that was their symbol too. Very close to, I have a slide that, one slide that says the swastika on one side and the Arrow Cross.

[00:12:47] And they look very much similar color red. And it just symbolically told you that this was, the Arrow Cross was a virulently anti-Semitic party. And now they were charged to finish the job of the Budapest Jews. And that's when the major event happened in my early life. Because all was left was all the Jews in Budapest.

[00:13:14] And the first thing they did was that on October, and exactly today it was October 10, when one night, oh, before that, bombing of Budapest started by the Allies in June. So we now were there, my mother and I, and the American bombers came during the day. The British bombers came during the night.

[00:13:41] And we lived in a very tiny apartment in the outskirts of Budapest in a pretty much working class neighborhood because my father couldn't afford to find a better place for us in the inner part of the city, which there was a big middle upper class Jewish neighborhood with, you know, a lot of Jewish people living there, 200,000 or so. So we lived in these outskirts.

[00:14:07] And we lived in a house which had kind of an L-shaped house which had beautiful apartments where a lot of the Christians lived. And then they put maybe L-shaped into a U-shaped by just putting some eight two-room apartments without running water, without anything. So that's where we lived. But there was a cellar under the two-story building.

[00:14:33] And we had to run into the cellar every night when the sirens would go off when the bombing started at night or during the day. And then October 10, one night, we were woken up. Somebody was banging on our door. And everybody out. And we heard soldiers yelling.

[00:14:54] And by that time, most of the Christians were moved out of this building because in order to gather these 200,000 Jews together to be ready to be deported, they had to be concentrated in some place. And they designated what they called yellow star houses. And everybody, all the Jews had to move into a yellow star house.

[00:15:21] And our house became a yellow star house, which meant that the Christians had to move out. And then, or the Jews could move into these houses. So it was easier to then grab everybody in the same building and put them into trucks and deport them. So there were a lot of Jews living in our building that normally didn't live there.

[00:15:43] But October 10, all I remember is that my mother woke me up and got dressed hurriedly. And we got, she helped me dress up. And we stepped out of the kitchen door into the courtyard. Well, my childhood innocence was shattered on October 10, 1944.

[00:16:12] Someone was banging at our door, yelling, everybody get out. Sometimes early dawn that morning. I was scared. I knew that it was not an air raid because I didn't hear any sirens. So my mother and I got dressed and we stepped out our door onto the courtyard. Jo and the other Jewish women and children standing there.

[00:16:42] Jo and the other Jewish women and I got dressed. And then, I heard orders. Someone shouting, everybody in a signal line. And my mother stood next to me on my left, holding my hand. The next thing I remember is someone, one of the soldiers shouting again. All grownups, two step forward and left. And my mother stepped forward, my hand slipping out of her hand.

[00:17:11] I remember started to cry, joining the other children. And the next thing I remember is the women started marching toward our gate. And there was a soldier standing next to me who put his hand on my head and said, Don't cry, little boy. Your mother will return.

[00:17:41] And although his words were prophetic, they didn't console me. I continued to cry. And I tried to keep my eye on my mother as she disappeared through our gate. And this was the last time that I saw her until the summer of 1945. And I was left there by myself with a number of other children.

[00:18:10] And I had no idea what was going on. Probably in shock, I guess. I don't exactly remember my mental state, but all I remember is that I was alone. And luckily, an older Jewish lady who was not taken away came to visit us. It was an old friend of my mother. I knew her really well. Used to come quite frequently to spend time with my mother. My name was Julia.

[00:18:39] She told me, said, Robert, put your clothes in a bag, and I'm going to take you to your grandparents' place in the city. And that's what happened to me. And I don't know what happened to the other children who were left there. And these women then were gathered in a collection center, a brick factory in the District 10 where we lived.

[00:19:09] They were then marched a few days later on foot to a Jewish labor camp for women in Austria in a little town called Lichtenwerth. And that's where my mother was put to labor to do some... I don't remember exactly what they were doing, that they were doing some work for the Germans.

[00:19:33] By that time, the Germans were trying to build ditches and so forth to prevent... Because they knew that the Russians were coming from the east. So my mother's... I had no idea what happened to my mother, of course. I learned all this months and months later. And this is the first time that I saw what the city looked like after months of bombing. And it was just an unbelievable sight.

[00:20:00] You know, torn down buildings and guns and furniture and everything. And that would be going to your grandparents' house? That was the first time? Just to walk. Yeah. We used to take two streetcars. It used to take 45 minutes or almost an hour to go to my grandparents' place. And now we had to walk because there were no streetcars anymore. You could see the streetcars that were bombed out or, you know. It was just a fascinating...

[00:20:27] I still remember looking at a four-story building with no walls and there's a kitchen table. There's two chairs. Right. I almost forgot what happened to me just a few hours ago. It was just, you know. But Julia delivered me to my grandparents' place. And they lived at what was by then an established ghetto in the center of the city. They built this ghetto.

[00:20:53] So it was about 20, 25 city blocks. It was a huge area. It's right in the middle of the Jewish neighborhood. And my grandparents lived just outside of the ghetto walls. There was a big 10-foot tall wall surrounding the ghetto. And once you were in there, you couldn't get out. And so our destination of all the Jews were to be in the ghetto.

[00:21:23] And I ended up with my grandparents. And I thought I felt safe because I knew them. And I found not just my grandparents there, but two of my aunts, my mother's older sisters, who were there with Aunt Piri, with two of her sons, Mike and Tom. And Aunt Clary with one of hers. Well, she only had one child. Ivan, who had polio and had to be in a wheelchair. But I felt safe. I was home. I knew everybody. Right.

[00:21:52] And I thought that I'll be okay. Well, that didn't last long because two weeks later, we were told, I was told that we have to move. Then, of course, I had no idea where we're going to move. But I heard these heated arguments between my grandparents and my two aunts as to what to take and what to leave. And my grandmother gave me a big wicker basket with a meat grinder in it, which had to be at least 15 pounds.

[00:22:22] And with my clothes on top of it, and he said, Roby, you're going to carry this. The nickname for Robert in Hungarian is Roby. And I lifted it up and I immediately saw that it was very heavy. And I started complaining that, Grandma, this is too heavy. And she said, never mind, you're going to carry it. So that's how we started our journey of the next several months.

[00:22:47] And we had to go to seven different places before the summer or the spring when we were liberated. And I had to carry the meat grinder. Wow. Until the time when I was, or the story is so, so strange that I don't even talk about it because there's no time for me. It has to squeeze everything into my 55 minutes.

[00:23:16] But what happened was my grandfather made a deal, a quid pro quo for, with his brother, who was older, much older than my grandfather. And his brother and his wife were not in very good health. And they had three sons. This was the Spitzer family, my mother's family.

[00:23:38] And the deal was that one of the older boys of my grandfather's brother was a very tall, strong guy, blonde, blue eyes, no Jewish features. And somehow or other, he managed to get an Aero Cross uniform and false IDs. Wow. And he was trying to rescue his parents.

[00:24:06] And he told my grandfather, if you allow my parents to live with you, I'm going to get some Swedish schutzpahs for you. Now, three countries were not at war with Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and Portugal.

[00:24:24] And the Swedes, by the time this happened, Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat that had a major role of saving tens of thousands of Jewish lives, was sent from Sweden to Budapest to be the sole purpose of saving as many Jews as he could.

[00:24:49] And he was issuing these documents called schutzpahs, free passports or free passes. Okay. And there was a single page, German on one side, Hungarian on the other side. And it basically had a picture of the person and the name when he was born. And it said that the person that holds his document is allowed to travel to Sweden.

[00:25:17] And traveling to Sweden in the summer of 1944 was ridiculous. The only Jews that traveled were traveling in cattle carts to Auschwitz. But there was another sentence in that schutzpahs that was even more important. It says, until this person can travel, they can move into protected houses, especially for the Jewish people.

[00:25:44] And this forced the government, the Aero-Kosk government, to set up what they called, we called it the small ghetto, but it was not a ghetto. It wasn't, the walls were around it. It was a block of buildings that with a sign on the door that this is a Swedish protected property for the Jewish people.

[00:26:04] And this uncle of my mother, because the grandfather's son, Lottie was his name. His promise was that I'm going to get schutzpahs for the seven of you, because I wasn't there yet when this deal was made. And in return, my parents will live with you and you need to take care of them.

[00:26:29] And indeed, I saw this strange couple there that I had no idea who they were. So they were all of us. And that's how we tried to survive, because he did produce, but only enough schutzpahs for my grandparents, my two aunts, the three boys and his parents. And he couldn't produce two extra schutzpahs or one extra schutzpahs for me.

[00:26:57] So ultimately, there were two of us or two people there who could not have any schutzpahs. And my grandfather made sure that I got one. And my grandparents, he and my grandmother didn't. But we ended up going to a protected house anyway, even though my grandparents didn't have any schutzpahs.

[00:27:20] And it later on, it almost costed their lives, because by then the Arrow Cross knew. Now, this is October 1944. The war is almost over. The Russians already liberated some of the Balkan countries, and they already came in and liberated the eastern part of Hungary. And the allies were getting closer and closer to Berlin. So everybody knew that the war was over.

[00:27:48] But the Arrow Cross, they decided to kill as many Jews as they could, knowing full well that this will, it's going to end up bad for them. And they would come into the protected houses that they were not supposed to, demand the Jews to gather in the courtyard and show the schutzpahs. And that's how my grandparents were caught. Wow. And they were taken away.

[00:28:15] But miraculously, my grandfather, who was obviously a very, you know... Savvy man. Savvy guy. Little guy. Right. Maybe five foot two. But he had, he managed to escape. And the two of them showed up. A few days later, rejoined us. But by this time, it was so dangerous to be in these protected houses that we tried to

[00:28:43] be ahead of them, a step ahead of them. And so we moved from one house to another house. It's kind of guessing where the Arrow Cross was moving into. And if they came in, and by that time, they just wanted to be brides. Because they knew that people who went to the protected houses, as opposed to the ghetto, because we were in the ghetto first.

[00:29:08] And I remember that I could describe it to you in detail, getting into the ghetto. The four gates to the ghetto, the northern, southern, eastern, and western gate. And my grandparent's house was very close to the northern gate, just like literally one street away. And that's where we had turned into the ghetto first, because we had to go there. Because everybody had to move in. And we had to line up in one single line.

[00:29:35] And the door as wide as maybe this, and soldiers in the gate. And everybody had to go through one at a time. And all the Jews that were carrying things, they had to discard the radios, watches, jewelry, rings that you had, if you had rings. And they were, I remember seeing a pile of jewelry on the sidewalk. And I just couldn't believe what was going on.

[00:30:03] And then I heard I was behind, we're single line. And I was behind my grandparents. And I heard this big argument between my grandfather and grandmother, because my grandmother told my grandfather that she hid her wedding ring into the lining of her coat. And my grandpa got really upset. He said, you shouldn't have done that, because, you know, they can shoot us right there. Or if they find that you're hiding something.

[00:30:32] But they didn't, they didn't catch her. So, but I'm a 60-year-old kid. Right. Trying to take this in. Right. And so we started out in a ghetto first. And then when Lutze came with the Schutzpasses, he showed up in the uniform. And he showed up with a horse-driven cart and got everybody, all of us in there. And nobody checked. I guess he must have brought maybe the guards at the gate. And we left the ghetto.

[00:31:00] And that part is not in my story that I talk about, because it's almost unbelievable how this could happen. But that's what happened. And that's how we got into the Schutz, with the Schutzpasses, into the protected houses. And life was extremely dangerous. First, there was a bombing during the day and night. And then we had the arrow cross that was just grabbing Jews.

[00:31:23] Because from the protected houses, you could go out and barter for food or find bread, because everybody was starving in Budapest. Because the peasants couldn't bring food into the city because it was constantly bombed. So life was very dangerous for big Jewish at that time. And that's what happened for several months.

[00:31:52] And we moved to six different places. And the last place we went to, which is the one I remember the best, is, no, the address is 34 Kocinski Street. It was the name. And the second floor, we moved into an empty room, because all we had was a room available. How many people were in that room? Well, there was the couple, Latsy's parents, there's two. My grandparents, there's four. My two aunts, there's six.

[00:32:22] And us, four boys. Ten. So there were ten of us. Wow. And we were sleeping on the floor, side by side, to provide warm, because all the windows were broken due to the bombing blast. And the biggest problem was how to get food. And who became one of my heroes was my oldest cousin, Mike, and Peter's older son. He was almost 15 years old.

[00:32:51] And his job was to go out. Of course, we all had to wear a yellow star. But he would take his yellow star off during the day and during the night. And he would go into a bomb dot buildings or a bomb dot store and look for something valuable. A piece of watch or a jewelry or a piece of clothing or a pack of cigarettes. Anything that had value. And then his name was Mike.

[00:33:19] Mike would then barter the stuff that he found for food and bring us food back so we could survive. But that's how we lived. And, of course, everybody is getting weaker and weaker. The last time when we had to move, I could not carry the meat grinder anymore. I was too weak because of malnutrition.

[00:33:47] But finally, it was so dangerous because the arrow cross was so brazen. They knew that people who went to the protected houses had money, jewelry, etc. Because nobody searched us. Nobody liked going into the ghetto. And what happened was they would come in, as I told you, gather all the Jews. And not just to see the shoot spots now, but they now demanded to have money, jewelry.

[00:34:15] And people who had those, they were the lucky ones. Because they would take those and move them back into the ghetto behind the walls. The people that didn't have jewelry or they didn't like them or whatever, they took them to the Danube, shot them and dumped them into the icy river. So, if you go to Budapest, you haven't been in Budapest, I see. No, I haven't been there. There's a beautiful memorial called the Shoes Memorial on the embankment of the Danube,

[00:34:45] which a famous artist designed and created out of concrete. These are shoes, grown-up shoes, children's shoes. And I actually have in my PowerPoint slide presentation a three-minute video reenactment of this event when the group of Jews are taken by the arrow cars to the Danube and they're killed and dumped into the river.

[00:35:13] And so, that's a very important, it's three minutes of a five-minute film that a filmmaker made in Budapest about around 2005. Because 2005, there's an anti-Semitic party called the Jobbik party. Well, the Jobbik means right. There's a right wing Jobbik. But this was coincidence that they were called the Jobbik party.

[00:35:43] I don't know the background. But they received suddenly in 2005. This is now, the war is over, everything is over. Years, years later. No higher curtain. They received as much as maybe 20% or 25% of their seats in the parliament. Because Hungarian system was a parliamentary system, still is. And this filmmaker decided to make a five-minute short. And this was the first three minutes of the short.

[00:36:13] And the last two minutes is something else. And I found him and called him up from Atlanta and spoke to him. And I told him that I'd like to use the first three minutes of his movie. And the truth is that he didn't like it. He said, I really like the short. I said, look, I don't have time. And I said, okay, I'm not going to use it. But then after a number of years went by and I said, I'm going to call him again.

[00:36:42] And I couldn't find him anymore. And I thought he probably passed away because he was an older man. And I decided to use these three minutes as part of my presentation. But that's the story of what happened to us. And then what the plan was, by this time, the Red Army was encircling the city of Budapest, getting ready for the final assault.

[00:37:09] And everybody knew that it's going to be over. And then the last minute, the Arrow Cross decided that we're going to blow up the ghetto and blow up its protection and just kill as many Jews as they could. And what saved us is, again, Raoul Wallenberg. Because, first of all, he spoke perfect German. And he was in contact with German authorities.

[00:37:38] And he found out about the plans. And he warned the Arrow Cross. And there were still a couple of German Nazis in Budapest. He says, if you do that, you'll pay for it. Because they'll be witnesses. And I know. And I already told by people in Sweden what's going on here. So the world will know what you did. So they called us off.

[00:38:05] And we were liberated on January 18, 1945, exactly a week after my seventh birthday. And, no, before that, we weren't liberated in the protected house. My grandparents and my aunts decided that it's just too dangerous to be in the protected houses. And we moved back into the ghetto. The last move we made. Wow.

[00:38:33] And that's how we started out there. Then Lhotse came, got us out of there. We went to all these protected houses. My grandparents said they were safer inside the ghetto because at least they're protected by a wall. And that's when we went to this 34 Cousinsic Street, the last move. By that time, I couldn't walk. My grandfather took me on his back. That's how we got back into the ghetto. And that's where we were liberated. And I saw it with my eyes.

[00:39:03] What happened on January 18. One morning was, because there were no windows, so there was always very noise. People were walking around and whatnot. It was eerily quiet suddenly in the morning. And all of a sudden we heard a lot of screaming and yelling going on. And everybody got up to run. We had two windows up to the street. And I was left lying there.

[00:39:33] And I said, please, I want to see what's going on too. And one of my hands picked me up and took me to the window and looked to the right. And we could see soldiers coming into the street. But they were not. All I could see is that they were not Nazi soldiers and they were not Aero Cross soldiers because they had their own uniform. Turns out these were the Russian soldiers. Turns out these were the Russian soldiers, the Red Army.

[00:40:00] And the people were running toward them, yelling a strange word that I didn't understand. The word was chleb, chleb. They said chleb, chleb. They didn't know Russians. They just, that's the word for bread in Russian. Oh. Because they were starving. Everybody was starving. So hungry. And that's how we got liberated. Wow. On January 18.

[00:40:23] And my grandfather and my cousin, Mike, walked back to their apartment at 106 Kirai Street, which was within a 10 minutes walk. They found the Christian family living there because the Jews who moved out, the space was available and the Christians could move in. And this was, some of them was an upgrade from where they used to live. I have no idea.

[00:40:48] But they went back and the family promised they move out next day. They said, give us a day and we'll move out. And that's how we moved back into my grandparents' apartment. And I was not able to walk anymore. I was just, I needed to be fed. And, of course, the Russians broke into some of the storages that the AeroCross and the Nazis had where there was some food.

[00:41:16] All I remember is that we had a lot of molasses. That wasn't very healthy. No. But. But it was calories, I guess. And so, but slowly I got back on my feet. And then in July 1945, we got word that my mother survived. And she was, but she couldn't travel because she was very, very sick. She had typhus and all kinds of ailments after all these months in this work camp.

[00:41:47] And she survived because of her best friend that was with her. I remember being very excited to see my mother again. I was waiting at the door of my grandparents' apartment when Uncle Bela, one of the two surviving brothers of my mother, arrived, pulled in a wheelbarrow and announced, Look, Robbie, here's your mother.

[00:42:16] I looked at what vaguely resembled a human form lying on top of the cart, covered with a blanket. I saw a skeleton face covered with tight skin and two large eyes looking at me out of the skull with no hair on top. No words came from this strange creature staring at me. And I said, This is not my mother.

[00:42:42] I turned around and ran inside crying. I shall never forget this sight as long as I live. Even now, more than 70 years later, it is painful to recall this event. The image of my mother's emaciated body and knowing the devastating effect of my inability to recognize her

[00:43:06] must have had on her brings out the worst emotional reaction I have to my Holocaust experiences. It is hard to describe the feeling that this reunion with my mother evokes in me even now. It is a feeling of hurt, frustration, and anger at all those who caused her to be an unrecognizable human being,

[00:43:34] a skeleton near death. At the same time, I feel ashamed that at the time when she needed me the most, I was not there for her. I think that telling these stories is very important. And I think that we see why when we think about what happened three years ago in Israel,

[00:44:02] because across the world, we have a rise in... Well, what happened in Israel was Hamas, clearly. It was Hamas. It was a terrorist attack. But then when we see the... When we see the reaction of so many people around the world,

[00:44:26] and the blaming of Israel and the blaming of Jewish people rather than the blaming of the terrorists, it makes me realize that... It was terrible what happened after that, October 7th. Yes. I mean, I had to rewrite my speech because I have to... In my introduction, I also studied the 20th century genocides,

[00:44:53] because I realized that the Holocaust was just a genocide, just like October 7th was a genocide. And I studied the genocides in detail. And I was searching for a common thread of what... How does this happen that genocides took place? And I don't know if you know how many genocides took place in the 20th century. How many? 34. Wow. And the Holocaust was the third largest one.

[00:45:22] Whereas the largest genocide was in China, the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong. And tens of millions of Chinese were killed. Yeah. But why nobody talks about it? The UN never talks about it because the Soviet Union had a seat at the Security Council of the UN later on. So anything that didn't give them, you couldn't talk about.

[00:45:49] And the second one was by the Holomodor. That's the Ukrainian word for the Ukrainian Holocaust, when Stalin starved 10 million or... Nobody knows the exact number, but at least 10 million people to death. These were the farmers. Many collectivized all the farms. And Ukrainian was a huge agricultural territory.

[00:46:15] And let these farmers starve to death. They would take their land. They would take their food. And so the Holocaust wasn't even the largest genocide of the 20th century. And that's when I started thinking about how could it happen. And these 34 genocides took place in all parts of the world. You know, in every continent. And I was looking for how could that happen.

[00:46:45] What's the motivation? What was the method of the genocides? And so forth. And I made a spreadsheet of it, you know, and looking for a common thread. And I couldn't find one. The only thing I found is that not a single genocide took place in a country where there was liberal democracy or Western democracy, as we call it. Okay? Okay. I'm not going. I'm talking about 20th century.

[00:47:13] I'm not going back before that, what we did. Americans did to the Indians. The 20th century. And I decided, I came to a conclusion, and I tell this, I talk about this to my students and grownups too, because I speak at churches, social organizations like Rotary Clubs and others. Because I came to the conclusion that there is good and evil in every human heart. Yeah.

[00:47:42] And there's a thin line that separates those. And you have to be extremely careful to cross that thin line. And the Nazi murderers who planned and executed, not the ordinary Germans who knew about it. They just turned the weather away. But 500 million people lived in Europe or still do. And they would have lost 600 millions to be killed.

[00:48:10] And most of them knew, particularly the Germans and their allies. But they didn't say anything. They just turned their way. They were apathy in how dangerous it is. And I said, how could that happen with people? But what happened? What about those who actually did the execution? Did they kill him? And I said, they must have crossed that thin line and became murderers. And that's what happened with the Hamas. Yes.

[00:48:40] And the only moral difference that I found between the two, that the Nazis tried to hide their crimes. If you remember history, they really tried to hide it. They denied it until finally they fessed up. Except maybe Austrians. The Austrians were the last ones. And they're still, you know, some say that never happened. But the Germans came clean. And they provided reparations.

[00:49:08] To this day, they're providing reparations to those Jews who were in concentration camp. But there are fewer. Not too many left. I would be the last generation of a solca survivor. And Hamas wasn't trying to hide. No. I don't know if you know about this 43-minute video that the Israelis put together. I've seen it twice. You've seen it? I've seen it. It's...

[00:49:35] And it's just unbelievable that they're laughing while they're killing, clashing the throats of women, cutting their breasts off. Calling their mothers. And they're cheering. And they're cheering and laughing and saying, Mom, I'm killing the Jews. What kind of people can this be? So these people crossed that pin line and they became murderers.

[00:50:00] And that's the only conclusion I came to after studying that 20th century genocide. And that's part of my presentation in my introduction and my conclusion when I tried to teach the grown-ups and kids too,

[00:50:17] that if you want to prevent the anti-Semitism or xenophobia or anti-racism or all these isms, then there's only one way to do that.

[00:50:39] And that is to have strict laws that would punish the people, prevent them from accomplishing what they did. And we're blessed with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We have laws. But we have to abide by the laws so that we don't let any one of our political leaders to become a dictator and lose our freedoms.

[00:51:09] Because it's so easy to lose our freedom, which is what I witnessed in 1945-48, how we lost our freedom. So that's my conclusion that I'm trying to end up with a positive note to the high schoolers that I talked to and the adults too.

[00:51:34] And amazingly, I found such amazing response to my speech when I talked to a church or a small town. The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust is a taxpayer from the non-religious organization headquarters in Atlanta. And I know the lady who was in charge. And they sent me to small towns in Georgia when I give the same speech. And you wouldn't believe it.

[00:52:03] It would be like in small towns and they would rent the biggest hall and there'd be no seats left. And there are 200 people and maybe two Jewish families out there. But these are all Christians. And they come and stand in line to just come and shake my hands and thank me to speak to them because they learned something. Because many of them never heard of the Holocaust or not much.

[00:52:29] Maybe never even seen a Jewish person in the rural towns. Right. It had thus happened. So that's why I keep speaking. And I think it is important to do that so that people understand the real life consequences and they can hear it firsthand. It humanizes the experience.

[00:52:57] And it's one thing to see it on a screen. Right. And it's another thing to talk to someone. Yes. Well, that's why the Bremen had this program where they bussed 10,000 to 14,000 students from the fifth grade to 12th grade to the museum. And they tried to get two hours. In one hour, they take them to the museum, which is really a very poor museum.

[00:53:25] It's not state of the art and they're cramped and they don't have room and they don't have money to go anywhere else. And then there's one hour reserved, a little hour and 15 minutes for a speaker to get up and speak to them. And that's what I've been doing now for 16 years. And I must have spoken to tens of thousands of students and so forth. And you can tell when you touch someone's heart.

[00:53:54] And I'm going to brag now. Please do. Because two years ago, we have a number of private schools in Atlanta. There are top private schools, Christian private schools. One is Westminster. Yes. You may have heard of Westminster. The other one is Marist, which is a Catholic school.

[00:54:16] Marist has a program today called Voices of Resilience, where every year it's an elective thing. Every January, kids, you have to be a senior or a junior to apply to go on this, to be part of this project. And 18 students are selected. Six years ago, when it started, 40 kids applied.

[00:54:44] Last year, this January, 80 kids applied. It became the most popular program. What is the program? These kids come to the Bremen Museum and listen to Holocaust survivor. Wow. And the next day, they take off for Europe. Then they go to Prague. They used to go to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, but they changed it because they wanted to have more time in Europe.

[00:55:08] They go to Europe and they go to Prague and they go to Theresienstadt, which was this fake concentration camp to show off that the Germans are doing. They had this band and musics and all that. Then they fed them and they closed up and they show them. And then they take them to Krakow in Warsaw and they go to Auschwitz and they show them what's there. And then these kids come back.

[00:55:38] And then, now who financed this? It was four or five Jewish guys who graduated from Westminster 50, maybe 60 years ago. And one of them called Jack Halpern, who owns a lot of real estate shopping centers. He had this idea and he got his friends and said, hey, why don't we put some money together and propose this project and we'll finance it. And Westminster said, OK, if you guys finance it, no problem.

[00:56:09] We'll see how it goes. And it became the most popular elective course. I think they started to get embarrassed. But two years ago, and I was the one who spoke to them first, the second, the third, the fourth and the fifth time because they kept asking. I said, we want Barbara Tony to speak to them. They were very impressed. And two years ago, there was a junior girl, Lila Hagen was her name. Still is.

[00:56:38] She graduated at North Carolina. She's in college. And she heard my speech. And then we heard her. Jack has a dessert reception after they come back in the 18. When they come to the Bremen, they can bring their siblings and their parents. So it could be 18 kids plus 30 other adults and siblings. So I talked to a group like 50, 60 people.

[00:57:04] When they come back, only the 18 kids are invited to a dessert reception at Jack's condo, which is a beautiful condo right at top of the Regency Hotel. And he got all kinds of desserts for them. And the kids are invited. And, of course, they invited me and my wife, too, who is also, by the way, a local survivor.

[00:57:26] And the kids are given a few minutes to get up and tell, how did this impact you and what did you take away? And if you listen to these kids, you'll be amazed at the impact that has on them. And they're truly amazed at what you hear.

[00:57:50] And Lila went home, talked to his mother, whose name is Rand, first name, Rand Hagen. Glenn, her maiden name was Glenn. Glenn. And it turns out that she was in charge of a $93 million philanthropic endowment, philanthropic organization.

[00:58:23] And she was so impressed by what happened to her daughter that Jack Halpern, who initiated this thing, and I got a phone call from her early this year after the kids come back. And we met her for coffee, and that's when I met her first time. And I actually saw her when they came to listen to me, but there were so many people that I didn't know who she was.

[00:58:51] And this time we had three of us sit down. And she told Jack, said, Jack, I decided to invest a million dollars for an endowment. And we need a million. They did the calculation of how big an endowment they need in order to pay for the trip for 18 students. And we need a million and a half. And told Jack, said, look, I know you have some of these Jewish friends of yours who are fairly well.

[00:59:19] If they want to put some money in, we need another half a million dollars. And then she turns to me and said, Robert, you wonder why I invited you to this meeting? And I said, yeah, I wonder. I have nothing to do with this, you know, except I'm a speaker. And then when they come back, they get one of my books dedicated to each of them. They order my books, and I just dedicate it, and I just put one sentence in there.

[00:59:45] I say, do so-and-so, and I put in, learn history to build a better world. Bob Bretonnier. And they get my book. That's all I do. And she turns to me and she said, I decided, I'd like to have your permission. I said, well, what permission do you need from me? He said, I'd like your permission because I want to name this endowment the Robert Bretonnier Honorary Endowment.

[01:00:15] And so, you know, I was floored. That's amazing. I said, look, you have my permission, but I didn't feel good about it. And after this meeting, I called her up. I said, Ren, I don't feel good about this because I think Jack is the one who started this. It was his idea. And she said, don't worry about it.

[01:00:38] I talked to Jack about this, and Jack thought that I should be the one, that name, because I am the living person who talks about this. And so you should have no problem. And I said, well, you made me feel a lot better. That's good. And then two weeks later, her parents said, they're going to provide the other half a million dollars. And now they had a million and a half.

[01:01:07] And officially, it became an endowment. Oh, wonderful. And the president of Westminster had a big luncheon meeting for us. And the school, the whole school, he abided the whole school. And they asked me to give my speech to 800 kids. Oh, that's wonderful. And then they had luncheon for us, just a small group of people. So this just happened this year. So here I am, you know, payback. Yeah.

[01:01:36] But that's what happens when you talk about it to some young person. They are touched, and it changes their life. And it's why it is so important to help make sure they remember history, that they learn history. And the Holocaust, and of course, also October 7th.

[01:02:03] I've watched many videos of people from October 7th listening to their stories. It's painful. It's not a fun thing to do. But I think that I owe it to them because they survived. What happened is terrible. It is. In the academic institutions, they were cheering and then yelling from river to the sea. Well, you know what that means, river to the sea.

[01:02:33] It means no Israel. The interesting thing you may not know, that in Budapest, Hungary, this was still under the Viktor Orban government. There was a huge demonstration for Israel. And I know it because I called. I have cousins left there. I have still young cousins.

[01:02:58] I called my cousin one day, and it happened to be the day when this evening demonstration was held at the Danube. And I talked to my cousin, and I said, can we talk? And she said, no, I'm rushing. We're going to this demonstration. And I had no idea what it was. And then I found out, and I got the video because I have a very close friend of mine who is a born-again

[01:03:26] Christian in Hungary, a lawyer devoted to fighting anti-Semitism in the legal euro. He used to represent Hungary in one time, the parliament, a very well-known lawyer. And he sent me the video of this particular thing. Hungary was the only country I know that had demonstrations against Hamas and for the Israelis.

[01:03:54] Well, in America and everywhere else, people were demonstrating for Hamas. Yeah. So there did wind up being an event, I think, in November, maybe December, three years ago, in Washington, D.C., standing with Israel. But there haven't been enough.

[01:04:18] It's been, of course, throughout our entire country, so many more demonstrations for Hamas. And I just wonder, would the people who have done that, if they, I think if they saw those 43 minutes or saw portions of it and saw, there are different things of that video that just haunt a person who watches it.

[01:04:43] The little kids who were there in their home with their father and watch their father be killed in front of them, and then the mother comes home and finds them, it's just, it's awful. It is awful. Well, this is something that I've given a lot of thought as I've done it because I read a lot and I do like to research.

[01:05:12] And I just, you know, came to the conclusion that, you know, we homo sapiens have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. We got stronger. We got taller. We got, you know, smarter. But I think that our hearts and souls have not been, had not changed. Yes.

[01:05:38] There's no other answer I could find that in this day, the 21st century, something like that can happen by human beings. That there's, you know. So how do you deal with that? That's the next question. And I can only think of one thing.

[01:06:00] You have to have very, very strict laws that are enforced when you do not allow the, when you see something and you do something about it. You don't allow what happened in Germany. Right. When it just kind of spread. And in Hungary too, where the Hungarians, my very neighbors that I grew up with, you know, they turned the other way. They didn't, nobody, nobody protested.

[01:06:28] And even the Catholic Church did so little. And it only took, how many years? I don't know, 1965, I think it was Pope Paul VI that came out with the Nostra Aetate. I don't know if you heard about it. I don't, this is a Roman Catholic thing. And I guess, you know, you have to be, if you're not a Roman Catholic, you may not know about it.

[01:06:55] But he came out with this declaration, recognizing what they did. And apologizing and declaring that the Jews had nothing to do with killing Christ. And that what we did during World War II was not enough. And, and if you haven't, and it's very, it's only a few pages long. It's a very interesting reading.

[01:07:21] So there's, here's, something is happening, but not enough. Yeah. And this is where the other private school comes in, the Marist. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you heard about Marist. Marist school is a private. Right. It's a Catholic school. Right. Well, they had a teacher, still have a teacher there called Brendan Murphy.

[01:07:46] And Brendan Murphy has been teaching there for, I don't know how many years, history teacher. And his hobby was to research and study anti-Semitism, going back to, you know, thousands of years. And he became an expert at that. And he started speaking about it.

[01:08:13] He put together a four-hour lecture that he divides into two segments. And he's now well-known in Atlanta. And I heard him speak and I got to know him. And they just, this year, I think it's this year when they established what they call the Bearing Witness Institute at Marist on the campus. Okay.

[01:08:39] And here are two Christian schools that are now involved in teaching about anti-Semitism and teaching about what happened in the Holocaust.

[01:08:53] I find it very, very interesting and soothing in my heart that it's the Christians that are taking proactive actions to teach about history. And it's just an amazing thing. And so, and I just arranged for Brendan Murphy to come to our building where we live.

[01:09:23] It's an independent living place, a 20-story high building. And he's on the agenda to come to speak this story. One hour and a half, one week, and then an hour and a half, another week. And I negotiated the deal between the owners of our building who runs this place and what his fees are because he charges for making this. He's a brilliant speaker.

[01:09:51] And if you ever have a chance to listen to Brendan Murphy make a note of that, he's a history teacher at Marist. I could introduce you to him anytime you wanted to meet him. I would love that. So I'll have to make a note of that. Just make a note of that because he's a terrific guy. He's a young guy and he's an excellent speaker.

[01:10:12] And he's got a whole PowerPoint presentation that is just unbelievable going back hundreds and hundreds of years demonstrating the signs of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church. This focus is on Catholic Church. That's all. Okay. All right. I will check that out. And it would make sense that he's doing that because he's teaching at a Catholic, at a Catholic private school.

[01:10:40] And then he told, we had a discussion about this Nostra Estate. And I said, well, what happened after, this is 1965 when this Pope Paul declared this thing. He said, you know, the Catholic Church is very hierarchical. So really the Pope is the king of the Pope. Right.

[01:11:01] And he says, unfortunately, it's not being accepted in the parishioners, smaller towns and so forth. So, and he's now speaking out about that, that they've been in the Catholic community. Right. But it's good to know. Hungary is a Catholic country body. Yes. 75 percent are Roman Catholics.

[01:11:26] And my, two of my lifelong best friends are Roman Catholics, which is kind of interesting. One I grew up with, you know, building, Tibor. And the other one that I escaped with, which is his bill, William Fodor, his last name. Well, we're going to talk about that escape in our next episode with you. I think that what you said is important, making sure that there are laws so that things can't slip through.

[01:11:56] And I think that— You have to teach about the history. Remembering history and learning history. And then also the fine line that each of us has between good and evil. And we're all, we're all capable of—

[01:12:14] And I'd like to add one more thing to that because it was at the Lord Elton, I think, in the 1800s, said something very profound. And it said, I'm going to paraphrase it, that power tends to corrupt and ultimate power corrupts ultimately. And I combine that with what I said about this crossing that thin line.

[01:12:41] I think that's the most dangerous thing in the world, the power. And whether it's a politician or mayor of a city or whatever, and we are all susceptible to power. Probably even I could become a dictator if I was given all the riches and power to do—because we are human.

[01:13:07] We're all human beings, and we cannot—I firmly believe—I'm not a Christian, so I don't think that we are born with sin. But I think we can become sinful if we cross that thin line. And power is one of the most dangerous things that can happen. That's why our constitution was designed the way it was designed, I think.

[01:13:32] Because the founders said, how do we control this desire for power? Because they knew if we don't do that, it leads to bad things. They distributed the power, and they also made each branch co-equal so that they pull on power against each other. That's what I'm worried about, what's going on.

[01:13:54] And I've lived in this country now since 19—I became an immigrant in 1969 from Canada, and I've never seen this. And I'm worried about it because we need a strong two-party system. And both parties, they can argue, they can debate, but they should, you know, negotiate. And that's what the system is designed. Yes.

[01:14:19] And we'll come back and talk more about that because I want to get your thoughts on some of the things that are happening in America today in the other episode we're going to do. One, two other things I wanted to say based on what you said.

[01:14:36] One, I think that what you're describing about evil and good in a person's heart, this is human nature. And you don't have to be a Christian to be able to go back to the Old Testament. You can also be Jewish or you could just go read the Old and the New Testament either way.

[01:15:02] And throughout the entirety, especially of the Old Testament, but in both books, there is this—there's not—it is. It's a struggle that man constantly has between choosing to do good or choosing to do evil. It is.

[01:15:50] You know, we struggle as Jews, Christians of good and evil. And what's the right thing? We have the Ten Commandments. We don't have the one commandment, which is the communist head, as I told you, is that end justifies the mean. That's it. The religion has no place in the communist system. That's why they're against religion because that's a competition, just like Hitler.

[01:16:18] That's why Martin Niemöller, the famous World War I submarine commander, German submarine commander, he liked the Nazis when they came to power. And then he realized that Hitler didn't like the church to speak up freely.

[01:16:41] And he started speaking up against letting Hitler do what he started doing in Germany. And Hitler put him into prison. And he was liberated in 1945 by the Americans. And it was one of the first prisons that were set up at Dachau. It was in a Dachau prison. It was long before I was born. And he started speaking to college students about his experience.

[01:17:11] And one day, one of the students asked him, how could this have happened? And he's today famous for his answer. And that's one of my slides. And that's one of the last slides in my conclusion. But basically what he said, well, first the Germans just came for the socialists and, you know, who were, you know, and the communists. And I wasn't a socialist and a communist and I didn't speak up.

[01:17:40] And then they came for the union members and so forth. And I wasn't one of them, so I didn't speak up. And then they came for the Jews. And I wasn't a Jew and I didn't speak up. And then they came for me. And by that time, there was nobody to speak up to them. That's a very nice quote. Yeah. Properly structured. And I show it just before the end of my presentation. And I say, what's the lesson from Niemöller's speech?

[01:18:10] They're lessons that you cannot be apathetic. That's right. That's a very dangerous thing. So like what you just were saying, that that's a story that has to be told and has to be taught. And unfortunately, it isn't being taught as much as it should be. Well, you are helping teach it. And I'm glad that I've been able to help share your story so that we can teach other people through this audience.

[01:18:39] And I appreciate the fact that you're willing to share these terrible things that happened to you and to turn it into something that can be beneficial for our society today. Well, I took this on as a life mission. And I'm, by the way, I've been always a very optimistic guy and I'm a very happy guy. And strangely enough, people ask me, well, what was your childhood growing up?

[01:19:09] And I said, I was a happy kid. Why? I put all these things in the safe and I was engaged in sports and the arts. I'm a big upper above. And we, you know, my wife and I, we, and we reached a point. I literally, literally lived the American dream. I arrived here without speaking a word of English, not having a penny in my pocket.

[01:19:33] And I arrived and got myself educated, got my children, my grandchildren educated and a terrific career. And the time came to give back. And we are, I literally told my wife some years ago, I said, look, we are where we are. And it's this country that helped us together. I could not be a German or a French citizen or a British citizen like I am an American citizen. I would always be an outsider.

[01:20:03] But here, I feel like an American because I'm amongst other immigrants who come from different parts of the world. And I feel totally home. And this is my country. And this, we have to give back. That's right. We support the arts and we support a lot of, you know, charitable organizations, education. The big thing in our list of charities. So that's what gives me pleasure.

[01:20:33] Because I discovered that when you get to the point where you can afford to give back, it almost feels better. You get a better satisfaction sensation than when you make it. It's wonderful to make money. It's good and it should. But when you give back and, you know, you're helping others or helping society, it also gives you tremendous satisfaction. And that's why I keep doing it. Well, Robert, thank you so much.

[01:21:02] Thank you for joining me today. And we're going to be talking to you about your escape from Hungary and about communism in another episode. But thank you so much for sharing this with me today. You're welcome. I'm Jenny Beth Martin. This is The Jenny Beth Show. If you enjoyed this, make sure that you hit like and subscribe so that you can stay up to date when we have new episodes. That was Robert Rotteny.

[01:21:27] I want to leave you with the rest of his life because it did not end in 1944 or in Budapest. He was 18 years old in 1956 when Hungarians rose up against the Soviets and he was in it. When the tanks came back, he walked across the Austrian border in the dark, leaving his mother behind. He got to Canada with no English, worked days and studied at night. And by 1961, he was at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

[01:21:55] He met his wife, Ava, who survived the same thing he did. They built a business together in Atlanta. A man who could have been crushed by Nazism, fascism and communism, escaped and made his way to America, where our constitution protects our natural human rights and he could live free. He's also part of our surviving communism series, where he talks about what came after the Nazis.

[01:22:24] And I encourage you to be on the lookout for that episode. In the meantime, check out Robert's book, From Light to Darkness, My Journey from Fascism, Nazism and Communism to Freedom. The book is available on Amazon. He goes into more detail than we had time to cover today. All of the royalties of the book go to an educational charity that helps poor families send their children to college.

[01:22:51] If this episode was worth your time, please hit like and subscribe. And also please share it with your friends and family so they understand why it is so important to hear the stories of those who survived the Holocaust and to hear the stories of those who survived the terrorist attacks on October 7th. I'm Jenny Beth Martin. This is the Jenny Beth Show.

[01:23:17] If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about liberty and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes at JennyBethShow.com, as well as Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, X and your favorite podcast platform. The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots Action.

[01:23:43] For more information, visit teapartypatriots.org.