Hidden Jewish Identity

At a moment when many historians are trying to bring to the American public’s attention the Slovak government’s push to make it illegal for its substantial Hungarian minority to speak or use Magyar, their own language, it is both useful and a pleasure to read Kati Marton’s book, Enemies of the People, about the persecution and survival of her family, and to remind ourselves of the horrors of Eastern Europe. Endemic anti-Semitism, Nazi occupation and collaboration, the murder of millions of Jews, wholesale redivision of frontiers leaving large numbers of people stranded in the middle of alien and hostile populations, then Stalinist rule, with all its cruelties and stupidities, followed by “reformist” communist governments that were no better, followed finally by the end of the Cold War and an indecent rush for the riches of free-market capitalism, which plunged many people into poverty while the young, the shrewd and the tough carved out huge fortunes for themselves. In Eastern Europe the past is not only always hovering over the present, it is not even passed. It waits, like some malevolent caged beast, ready at any moment to escape and bring back all the horrors.

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