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He was one of many Jews from Budapest who were endowed with extraordinary qualities of survival and re inventiveness on emigration to the West and who changed thereby the course of history of our world to date.He was "nurtured" in England and others from Hungary were nourished in the city of lights Paris. He has a background as activist and Philanthropist as one of a group that transformed a world bent on fascism to better their democratic roots through his Philanthropy.Note his description of the Nazi occupation and his role to writer Michael Lewis.Young Soros had to hide his Jewishness.
George Soros is the son of the Esperantist writer Tivadar
Soros. Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a Hungarian Jew, who was a prisoner of war during
and after World War I and eventually
escaped from Russia to rejoin his family in Budapest.[5][6]
The
family changed its name in 1936 from Schwartz to Soros, in response to growing anti-semitism with the
rise of Fascism. Tivadar liked the new
name because it is a palindrome and because it has
a meaning. Although the specific meaning is left unstated in Kaufmann's
biography, in Hungarian, soros
means "next in line, or designated successor", and in Esperanto, it means "will
soar".[7] His son
George was taught to speak Esperanto from birth and thus is one of the rare native Esperanto
speakers. George Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home, and
that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.[8]
George
Soros has been married and divorced twice, to Annaliese Witschak, and to Susan Weber Soros. He
has five children: Robert, Andrea, Jonathan (with his first wife, Annaliese);
Alexander, Gregory (with his second wife, Susan). His elder brother, Paul
Soros, a private investor and philanthropist, is a retired engineer, who
headed Soros Associates, an international engineering firm based in New
York, and established the Paul
and Daisy Soros Fellowships for Young Americans[9][10].
George Soros' nephew Peter Soros, a son of Paul Soros, is married to the former Flora Fraser, a
daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and
the late Sir Hugh
Fraser, and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter.[11]
[edit]
Native Hungary, and move to England
Soros was thirteen years old in March
1944 when Nazi Germany took military control over Hungary[12]. Soros
worked for the Jewish Council for two days[5],
which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary to forcibly
carry out Nazi and Hungarian government anti-Jewish measures. Soros later
described this time to writer Michael Lewis:
The
Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was
told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of
paper...It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 a.m....And I was given this
list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized
it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips
of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported.[13]
To
avoid his son's being apprehended by the Nazis, Soros's father paid a Ministry
of Agriculture employee to have Soros spend the summer of 1944 living with him
and posing as the godson. Young Soros had to hide his Jewishness even as the
official was overseeing the confiscation of Jewish property.[14]
In the
following year, Soros survived the battle of Budapest in
which Soviet-Romanian, German and Hungarian forces
fought house-to-house through the city. Soros first traded currencies during the Hungarian hyperinflation of
1945–1946.
Soros emigrated to England in 1947 and graduated
from the London School of
Economics in 1952. While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, Soros funded
himself by taking jobs as a railway porter and a waiter at Quaglino's restaurant
where he was told that with hard work he might one day become head waiter. He
eventually secured an entry-level position with London merchant bank Singer &
Friedlander.
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