Anti-Semitism takes the stage in Hungary

[frazzled]

1. That's how it all began before: removing people from their posts

My (fairly secular Jewish) grandparents left Hungary in the early 20th century, and frankly never looked back. My connection to the country was through their language and my grandmother's absolutely superlative Hungarian cooking, but other than that ... . I visited Budapest only briefly six or seven years ago, and didn't get a good sense. But everything I read lately has me worried.

A very good book on Jews who were forced to leave Hungary during the Nazi rise to power is Katy Marton's The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World. (Incidentally, she was married to Peter Jennings and then Richard Holbrooke).

The people she writes about were the mathematicians/scientists Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner and John von Neuman—without whom America wouldn't have developed the nuclear bomb, but who also became huge advocates for never using it; the great photographers Andre Kertesz and Robert Capa, who contributed so much to photojournalism and the art of photography; the writer Arthur Koestler; and the filmmakers Alexander Korda and, finally, Michael Curtiz (Casablanca). It's a good read. Hungary lost all its scientific and artistic geniuses in the 20th century; looks like they're trying to do it again: how stupid of them really. And how scary.