Spring Break
Reporting from behind the 'iron curtain'
Evan Helmuth
Issue date: 11/2/09 Section: News
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Kati Marton, bestselling author and wife of top diplomat Richard Holbrooke, spoke at the Kansas City Public Library - Plaza Branch about her latest book, "Enemies of the People," which reveals her family's experiences during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of her native country, Hungary.
Marton's parents were both journalists for western media outlets. Her father was an Associated Press reporter and her mother was a correspondent for the United Press. Both of the Martons won numerous awards for their coverage of Soviet Hungary, particularly during the Hungarian Revolution.
When the last free western media left Hungary - and everywhere else behind the "iron curtain" - her parents remained a huge thorn in the side of the Soviet regime, Marton said.
The two were the last people left reporting actual events and not just Soviet propaganda about what was taking place behind the "iron curtain" in the early 1950s.
As such, their family was the subject of constant surveillance by the Hungarian secret police, the Ávo.
Marton recently applied for and obtained a copy of the file the Ávo kept on her family, which she described as "one of the biggest files they had on anyone."
The book is largely based on the reams of documents found in the file and Marton's own memories of a childhood torn by the abduction and imprisonment of both parents under false charges of espionage.
The Martons were released from prison in 1956 in connection with the Hungarian revolution after nearly two years.
During imprisonment, Marton's father eventually signed a false, torture-induced confession about being a CIA agent. Sensing they would be re-arrested after the Soviet invasion crushed the revolution, the Martons eventually fled Hungary and settled in the United States.
During her presentation, Marton described the elaborate scheme of a play date used to distract her during her mother's arrest and the feeling of being a six-year-old completely alone in a house with her eight-year-old sister after the arrests.
She also told about the revelations in the Ávo file that just about everyone her parents knew was informing on them to the Soviets, including at least one blackmailed U.S. military officer and embassy official.
Marton, whose Jewish grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz, touched briefly on her father's involvement in the covert resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II and even had one or two fond things to say about the secret police.
After reading an excerpt from the daily intelligence logs in the Ávo files that detailed a day Marton's father took her and her sister shopping and out for ice cream, Marton found a kind word to say about the Ávo.
"In some ways, I must be grateful to the Ávo for helping me to relive some very fond childhood memories through their files of days such as this one."
ehelmuth@unews.com
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