Chapter 4 Chapter 4 The Cellars of Budapest

"Here I am, struggling. Isn't that an amazing feeling? There's only one way to go." Nightmare Comes True For the residents of Budapest, life in 1943 was mysterious and eerie.At this time, the Allied forces had established a firm foothold in southern Italy, and their fighter planes flew to Budapest.While the city seemed under threat of attack, fighting escalated elsewhere in Europe, and danger was imminent for Hungary: coal shortages and schools closed for fear of air strikes. By the spring of 1944, almost all of Europe's Jewish population had been wiped out by the Nazis.It was feared that Hungary's one million Jews, the largest Jewish community in Eastern Europe, would be the next Nazi target.News of the mass murder at Auschwitz is spreading.The Russians are marching west, but can they break down the Nazi barrier in time to save the Jews?

For the Jews of Budapest, a nightmare seemed to be upon us. March 19, 1944 was a Sunday, so the Soros family was on Loba Island.They were so far away that they did not hear or see the horrors happening just south of Budapest: German tanks were marching along the Budapest banks of the Doja River.The Nazi aggression is expanding.It was a "peaceful" invasion: no gunshots, just the roar of tank chains and motors.The streets were deserted overnight, and everyone hid in the hideouts of their homes until they were sure they were safe, their main automatic action being to grab the phone.

Like most people in Budapest, George considered the Nazi invasion of his homeland to be short-lived, probably no more than six weeks: it seemed to seek feeling.Elsewhere, the Nazis were in retreat.The war seemed to be over soon. Six weeks is not long. But no one knows for sure.The only thing to do is to look good and disappear. To stay in the street may be to die. The Jewish community in Budapest is divided between optimists and realists.The optimists clung to their delusions until the last moment on March 19 when Hitler's troops moved in.Even with Nazi tanks rolling through the streets, they thought that the fate of the Jews would not be too bad, that the reports of the Holocaust elsewhere in Europe could not be true, and that the war would end quickly anyway.

The realists also believed that the war would end immediately, but they believed in the Auschwitz massacre, and they doubted that the war would end immediately and that the Jewish people would be saved. Divada Soros believed the clamor of war, ten years after he came to power in the Nazis.I have been following this party for a long time.He saw the rampant expansion of the Nazis, the senseless violence that had invaded the world war.He had long feared that sooner or later the violence would spread to Hungary, to Budapest, to his family. After the tyranny of the First World War, Di Huada vowed to help his family through another.He had no financial worries because he had sold some real estate early in the war.He has a high level of self-confidence, and his calm comforts George, Paul, and Elizabeth.Ferreg Nager, then a 13-year-old boy, recalled the sad and dreadful guessing game his father played that spring: predicting how many of his family and friends would disappear.At least half of them were unfortunately hit by his father.His father breathed a sigh of relief and said with confidence, "It won't be the Soros family, no."

Di Huada is a survivor and he will take care of his family. Over the next 12 months, thousands of Budapest Jews were killed, convincingly confirming the prophecy of Friedrich Nagel's father.Survivors, including George Soros and his family, lived through horrific days and nights. The Nazi authorities gave the Budapest Jewish Committee the important task of disseminating and posting notices on the deportation of Jews in the Jewish community.The committee defers this dreadful task to immature children. George is one of them. In the committee office, he was given little slips of paper with his name on them, each ordering someone to report to the Jewish school at nine o'clock the next morning, with a blanket and twenty-four-hour food.

George asked his father for advice, showing him the list.He saw the distorted expression on his father's face—the Nazis were hunting Jewish lawyers in Hungary. "Pass the notices," he taught his son, "but tell everyone that these are eviction notices." George did, but he discovered that some of the Jews he had told were not prepared to hide from the Nazis, even if it meant deportation.If the Nazis declared that Jewish lawyers would be expelled, that was the law and it should be obeyed. "Tell your father," said one, "I'm a law-abiding citizen, I always have been, and I'm not breaking the law."

Section 2 The Great Escape of Father and Son Divada Soros was a well-handled father during these dire times.The gallows hung over the heads of the Jews in Budapest - the dead man could have been George if the Nazis found out he was Jewish.The nightmare of a trip to a concentration camp suddenly becomes a terrifying reality. "It's a disorderly occupation," Divada told his son. "Normal laws don't apply. You have to forget what you do in normal society. It's an abnormal environment." Di Huada taught George how to act in this "abnormal" situation.To ensure his son would not be taken away by the Nazi authorities, Tivada bribed a Hungarian official to allow his son to haunt the Ministry of Agriculture as the son of a non-Jewish official.Di Huada also bought a fake ID card for his son, which became the key to his son's survival.

During the war, George Soros became Cynos Kies. Tivada also provided financial assistance to the official's Jewish wife so that she could escape the Nazis.In later years, George Soros euphemistically called his father's actions a purely "business transaction." The Hungarian authorities, bribed by Tivada, were responsible for confiscating the property of those Jews who had been sent to Auschwitz. George accompanied them all over the country. The boy's adventures are endless. "If I get caught, I'm going to die," said George Ruth, as if he had no idea how dangerous his situation was.

Hiding is important.A hiding place is a cellar, built into the stone walls.You can go inside along the up and down, narrow and cramped stone steps.In another hideout in the cellar, there's more cover, on the other side of a locked door.The family hid in the second place, the one inside. George and his family had a total of eleven hideouts.They often spend weeks in a friend's attic or basement, never knowing that they'll lose these safe havens all at once.Had 14-year-old George experienced fear during this time, he would never have admitted it later. Indeed, those years were an adventure for Hua.

At one point, Divada and George were both hiding in one place, both using non-Jewish ID cards.They question each other, but not as father and son, so as not to reveal their true identities. Another time, while Soros was holed up in a cellar, George, Paul, and De Vauda played games to pass the time.They bet a little candy, and when George or Paul won, he got to eat the winnings.Tivada may have recalled an old World War I survival game in which he refused to eat the candy he won. George found the experience of the war in 1944 very stimulating, and he later described it as the happiest period of his life.He felt as if he were Indira Iounis, the hero of the movie, with all his guts and none of the fears of mortals.With Tivada around, it was different: George was very proud of his father, inspired by his self-confidence, and considered him a true hero.

Speaking of obvious mistakes, it was Di Huada who taught George the art of survival that he would never forget. One: Taking risks is the right thing to do. In the latter part of World War II, he spent his life taking risks all day long before Di Huada believed that most of the other adventures were worthwhile. Two: When taking risks, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't fight for any danger, it's unrealistic, unrealistic, and superfluous. To avoid the Nazis, George Soros had no choice but to take risks.When he accepted those fake IDs, he knew exposure meant death. He doesn't need to make a life or death decision.He can take risks without fear that failure will take everything from him.He even enjoys taking risks, as long as he gives himself room to come back. "I want to survive," he told a television reporter at the height of his success, in 1992, "not to risk destruction." The war taught George other lessons. We have drawn the theme in advance, and these perceptions do not necessarily correspond to the real state of the world.George's lesson: "The break between reality and perception." It was this "breakthrough" that he would always talk about as he later wove his web of philosophy of life and theory of financial markets. Part Three In the fall of 1945, George Soros went back to school.The war was over, and Jews and non-Jews were no longer divided into two classes.George is fifteen, and he likes other schoolmates who have gone through the trauma of the Nazis, they are precocious.That trauma was still evident in many of my classmates."The discipline in the class was horrific," recalls Poe Turteni. "A lot of us had little pistols and we went to class with them. It's good to have a gun. It made us mature. But it was very childish." Residents of Loba Island, including George and his family, came to Loba Island in the spring of 1945—the first return visit after the war.They told each other wartime stories, recounting how they struggled to survive, talking about near-term plans that tied into what they imagined might happen to post-war Hungary. They all pondered a distressing question: Should a person leave his country? After escaping the butcher knife of the Nazis, the Hungarians woke up from their nightmare. However, it is unclear whether the new government will be benevolent. Friends of the Soros family are hopeful, eager to believe that things will turn out well; others are skeptical and cynical.They were ready to pack up and leave as long as they could still get their protection. George Soros falls into the latter category.He felt that it was time to leave Hungary and go westward. In the autumn of 1947, when Soros was 17 years old, he left the country alone.His older brother, Paul, stayed in Hungary for an extra year as he was eager to finish his engineering courses.George's first stop was Bern, Switzerland, and immediately after that he went to London, a place that sounded appealing to teenagers.Thanks to his father, George had enough money to travel.But there he had to rely on his wits again when his father's supplies ran low.He could only rely on his aunt, who had settled down in Florida.Although England should have allowed Soros to settle down to a happy life, he had too much money and too few companions to enjoy what the city had to offer him.It was one of the most difficult episodes of his life.He was alone, and actually disheartened.However, he still struggles to find light in the darkness.Sitting in a café in London, he muses half-humorously: "Here I am, struggling. Isn't that an amazing feeling? There's only one way to go." Of course, walking on eggshells is not a wonderful feeling.All an 18-year-old boy can do is work odd jobs and wait for his luck to strike.He worked as a waiter in a restaurant called Quagolino in the Rose Quarter of London.It was a place where nobles and movie stars dined and danced.Sometimes, when he ran out of cash, he had to eat rotten fish and prawns.Years later, he recalled that he even envied a cat because it had sardines and he didn't. After the temporary work is over, it is still a temporary job. In the summer of 1948, he moved to work on a farm as part of a "mutual aid project."He organized a strike to get farmers paid by the labor rather than by the day (and in 1990 he was the epitome of the financial industry).Thanks to Soros' efforts, he and other hired workers got more income.In Safe Ork, he harvests apples.He also worked as a family painter, and later used to brag to his friends that he was a good painter. Odd jobs, poverty, solitude, and virtually no fun were terrible memories that George's Ministry could not erase for many years to come. "I bring out these fears: It's not great. Fear of hitting rock bottom like that again. Had it once, never wanted to do it again."