George Soros Interview On 60 Minutes
When the Nazis occupied Budapest in 1944, George Soros' father was a successful lawyer. He lived on an island in the Danube and liked to commute to work in a rowboat. But knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, he decided to split his family up. He bought them forged papers and he bribed a government official to take 14-year-old George Soros in and swear that he was his Christian godson. But survival carried a heavy price tag. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his appointed rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.
(Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)
KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros' friends and neighbors.
(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) You're a Hungarian Jew…
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
KROFT: (Voiceover) …who escaped the Holocaust…
(Vintage footage of women walking by train)
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.
(Vintage footage of people getting on train)
KROFT: (Voiceover) …by–by posing as a Christian.
Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.
(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)
KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made.
KROFT: In what way?
Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and–and anticipate events and when–when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a–a very personal experience of evil.
KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that's–that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Not–not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't–you don't see the connection. But it was–it created no–no problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c–I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was–well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets–that if I weren't there–of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would–would–would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the–whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the–I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Sorros, Open Societies, the "Whistleblowers" and PsyWar
. . . Mr. [Vaughn] Smith set up Frontline by borrowing £3 million ($5.7 million) against his family’s estate in Norfolk, England, and has received financing for its events from the Open Society Institute, a philanthropic organization set up by the billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros. Though Frontline has yet to break even, Mr. Smith is weighing the possibility of opening a club in New York or Washington, perhaps with a local business partner. . . .
“In London, A Haven and a Forum for War Reporters” by Eric Pfanner; The New York Times; 8/26/2010.
5. The relationship between Assange and the Frontline Club is detailed in a Guardian article.
There has been mounting disquiet among some members of the Frontline Club over the relationship forged between its founder, Vaughan Smith, and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.
Now Smith has invited concerned members to an “open forum” tomorrow evening to discuss the issue. It will begin with a conversation between Smith and John Owen, chairman of the club’s board of trustees.
Smith will explain the decision-making process behind the club’s involvement with Assange. He spent two months working from the club before his arrest in early December. He is facing extradition to Sweden.
When Assange was refused bail because he had no fixed abode, Smith offered his home in Norfolk as an address in order to secure bail for Assange. He has been staying there since being released. . . .
6. There are indications that WikiLeaks had intended to enlist the support of Soros all along.
. . . Operating a Web site to post leaked documents isn’t very expensive (Young estimates he spends a little over $100 a month for Cryptome’s server space). So when other Wikileaks founders started to talk about the need to raise $5 million and complained that an initial round of publicity had affected “our delicate negotiations with the Open Society Institute and other funding bodies,” Young says, he resigned from the effort. . . .
“Wikileaks’ Estranged Co-Founder Becomes a Critic (Q&A)” by Declan McCullough; Cnet News; 7/20/2010.
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