During World War II, George Soros, a member of the SS (a Nazi paramilitary organization) or Nazi collaborator who helped confiscate Jewish property.
As a prominent political activist and supporter of left-wing causes, Hungary-born billionaire financier George Soros has been targeted by smear campaigns, and nothing more heinous than the persistent – and false – claim that Soros, a Jew, was a Nazi. . supporter, collaborator and/or paramilitary officer during World War II.
The fact that Soros was only nine years old (born 1930) when the war broke out and every 14 years when Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945 did not suppress the enthusiasm of his critics for spreading those rumors, adding the absurd statement, which first emerged in November 2016, that Soros literally served as an officer of Schutzstaffel’s paramilitaries (SS) in Germany.
Here are two twitter examples:
– G.I. Joe ?? (@toombstone) November 26, 2016
– Phx Ken (@PhxKen) June 15, 2017
This accusation continues to circulate on social media in the form of a black-and-white photograph of a young man, the so-called Soros, dressed in an SS uniform (see above), accompanied by an edition of this legend:
.. I’ll give you George Soros. An SS from Gerguy’s National Socialist Workers’ Party. Nazi party. He served under Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. He said it at the most productive moment of his life. The destruction and agony around him the euphoric. This guy in politics with Hillos Angeles and Clinton. And some of you think Trump is dangerous. Hou the angels the angels the angels!
Well, actually. But given his age, Soros would not have been able to enroll in the SS (whose minimum age was 17) even if he had wanted to. Moreover, as a Hungarian Jew, you may not have simply met the needs of the SS for a purely “aria” heritage. Instead, Soros and his entire circle of relatives were forced to hide their identities and pretend to be Christians to avoid being forcibly housed in ghettos, interned in concentration camps, deported or murdered for Hungary’s 10 months of Nazi profession since 1944.
The mis-titled photo is gently demystified using an inverted symbol search. The young man in Waffen-SS uniform is Oskar Groening, a Nazi who served in the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1942 until the end of the war. More than 70 years after this photo was taken, Groening was convicted of being complicit in the murder of at least 300,000 Jews.
Was Soros a Nazi collaborator?
It is also claimed that Soros survived the German profession of Budapest by placing a Nazi “collaborator”. Glenn Beck, a Fox News expert, argued in November 2010, for example, that 14-year-old Soros “helped the government confiscate the land from its Jewish friends and neighbors” and, worse (in Beck’s view), did not regret it:
For example, when George Soros was 14, his father necessarily bribed a government official to welcome his son and let him pretend to be a Christian. His father’s just looking to keep him alive. He even had to confiscate the assets of the Jewish people.
Now believe that you are Jewish and that you will have to pass and confiscate the property of your fellow Jews. And you pretend not to be Jewish and if anyone finds out, you’re dead. In fact, he had to go under seeing other people sent to their imaginable murders, watching other people pick up their belongings, fire them knowing they were going to die.
“I don’t need to question the 14-year-old,” Beck said dishonestly a series of faithful displays to portray Soros as a nasty left-wing “marionnettist.” “However, I would have liked to have asked the 80-year-old that not once did he say he regretted it,” he added.
– Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) 2 September 2017
Other conservative and right-wing media figures adapt:
– Mike Cernovich ?? (@Cernovich) September 13, 2017
– James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) August 18, 2017
– Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) 12 June 2015
However, the undeniable fact is that George Soros did not say or do anything that resembled what he was accused of. No way Soros, who turned 14 years after the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, was a “Nazi collaborator”. At no time did he confiscate (or help confiscate) the assets of the Jews, “identify the Jews to the Nazis,” nor did he help “gather” those who were to be deported or exterminated through the Germans (to respond to some of the rates opposed to him). And although Soros testified in the notorious 60 Minutes interview that he has no regrets about the time of the German occupation, he also claimed that it was exactly because he had not done any of the things attributed to him that he was clear about.
The 60-minute interview
Kroft: “I sense it came out … indeed, and helped with the confiscation of the assets of the Jews.”
Soros: “Yes, it’s true. Yes, I do.”
Kroft: “I mean, that’s it — it sounds like a delight that would send a lot of other people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?”
Soros: “No, not at all. Not at all. Maybe when you were a kid, you don’t … you don’t see the link. But it didn’t create any problems.
Kroft: “No guilt?”
Soros: “No”
Kroft: “For example, ” I’m Jewish, and here I am, watching those other people go. Well it could be that, I’ll be there. “None of this?”
Soros: “Of course, … maybe I’m in the other way, or I may be the only one who’s taken the thing away. But it doesn’t make sense that I shouldn’t be there, because – well, in fact, in a form of laughter, it’s like in the markets, that if I’m not there, of course, I didn’t, but someone else would get it out, I would, I’d get it out anyway. or not, I’m just a spectator, the assets removed. So I had no role to play in cutting these assets. So, I had no guilt emotions.
Soros’ biographer, Michael T. Kaufman, described Soros as “visibly stunned” through Kroft’s interrogation line. Kaufman responded to the claim that Soros was concerned about the confiscation of Jewish assets in his book, Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire (Knopf, 2002).
While it is true, Kaufman wrote that one of the works delegated to the protector of the transitoryness of young George (a Hungarian bureaucrat named Baumbach) by taking an inventory of Jewish houses already confiscated by the Nazis, Soros’ participation accompanied Baumbach on one such mission. . :
Shortly after George went to live with Baumbach, the guy was commissioned to take an inventory of the vast property of Mor Kornfeld, an incredibly wealthy aristocrat of Jewish origin. Kornfeld’s circle of relatives had the wealth, wisdom and connections to be able to leave some of his assets in exchange for a permit to go to Lisbon. Baumbach was ordered to move to Kornfeld’s estate and invent works of art, furniture and other objects. Instead of leaving his “daughter” in Budapest for 3 days, he took the boy with him. While Baumbach detailed the equipment, George walked through the park and spent time with Kornfeld’s staff. It was his first stopover on a guy like this and the first time he was riding a horse. He did not collaborate with anyone and he paid attention to what he believed was his greatest responsibility: to make sure that no one doubted that it was Sandor Kiss. One of his practical considerations was making sure no one saw him urinate.
George’s father, Tivadar Soros, provided an account of the incident in his 1965 autobiography, Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi Occupied Hungary (note: Tivadar Soros called the head of the ministry “Baufluss”, but Soros showed us that the correct call is Baumbach):
Baufluss commissioned confiscated Jewish property through the Ministry. Only house on weekends; edited the rest of his time doing inventories in the provinces. During the week, George spent his time alone in Baufluss’s apartment. Having nothing else to do, he caught the attention of some of his companions, who lived in the construction of the front. Communicating through the hand, they seemed surprised to see him locked in someone else’s house. The following week, the benefactor Baufluss, in an effort to encourage the unfortunate child, took him to the province. At that time, he ran in Transdanubia, west of Budapest, in the style of ownership of a Jewish aristocrat, Baron Moric Kornfeld. There they were tasted and dined through what was left of the staff. George also met with several other ministry officials, who promptly took sympathy for the young man, Mr. Baufluss’s alleged godson. He even helped with the actions. Surrounded by intelligent companionship, he temporarily regained his spirits. On Saturday he returned to Budapest.
“It even helped with inventory,” Tivadar Soros wrote. It’s a detail not to be discovered in Kaufman’s book. Some may be quick to cite this as evidence that Soros is in fact a “collaborator,” however, given that this has only happened once, and that Soros was forced to play Baumbach’s godson role while in the group of genuine Nazi collaborators, demands greater meaning as a “collaborator” beyond all moderate boundaries.
In addition, these biographical passages show that Steve Kroft’s statement on 60 Minutes that Soros “accompanied his fake godfather on his tours, confiscating property from the Jews” is completely false. Tivadar Soros wrote that most of the young George in Baumbach’s care had been alone in Baumbach’s apartment. Both Tivadar and Kaufman report that George only resided with Baumbach for a short time, a few weeks, before Tivadar, involved in the real identity of his son was in danger, sent him to spend the summer of 1944 with his mother (who herself lived under an alias in a beach hotel some distance from Budapest). George Soros hasn’t spent more time with Baumbach.
Soros served the Jews with notices of deportation?
Another “Nazi collaborator” trope holds that young George Soros helped send fellow Jews to their deaths by delivering deportation notices on behalf of Budapest’s Jewish Council (Judenrat in German), an organization tasked by the Nazis with helping enforce Nazi policies on the Hungarian Jewish population:
– KellyLeeMedia (Jasian12345) August 23, 2017
– Armageddon #bluehand (@davis_blackwood) 15 November 2016
However, as in the case of the rumors of “confiscation” already mentioned, here we place risk-free facts about George Soros’ adolescence twisted and exaggerated in a dreadful lie. According to Soros’ father, school-age jewish youths had to buy for advice. Among these races (he came here to realize), was the delivery of deportation notices to eminent Jews. But George really spent the two days as a child of the Jewish Council’s career, did not carry out the responsibilities assigned to him precisely as he had been ordered, and was tasked with warning the recipients of notifications that they deserve not to comply:
Because Jews may no longer make it to school and their teachers may no longer teach, they were ordered to attend the council headquarters. The young men were enlisted as messengers under the command of their teachers. My youngest son, George, is also a messenger. At that moment, he went home at seven o’clock in the afternoon.
‘What did you do all day?’
“Especially nothing. But this afternoon I won delivery notices at other addresses.”
“Do you have what they said?”
“I even have one at home.”
I passed a small sheet of paper, with a typed message:
“Do you know what that means?” Did I ask you?
“I can guess, ” he answered very earnestly. “They’ll be hospitalized.”
Kids are intelligent fortune tellers. I wondered if he knew what it meant to be in the hospital. Did my son realize that these other people would be deported to Germany and probably killed? I was too ashamed of the aggregate where I had brought it to enlighten it.
“The Jewish Council has no right to give such orders to others,” I said. “You don’t have to paint on it anymore.”
“I tried to tell the other people I called not to obey,” he said, obviously disappointed that he no longer let him work. He began to enjoy his mailing career: it was all a wonderful adventure.
Soros said helping the Nazis was the happiest moment of his life?
In a foreword, George Soros wrote for a reprint of Masquerade in 2011, describing the ten months of the Nazi profession as “the happiest moments of my life”:
I was fourteen. We were in great danger, however, it was said that my father was in control of the situation. I was aware of the risks because my father explained them to me a little bit, but deep down I didn’t know he could hurt me. We were being persecuted by evil forces and obviously we were in the aspect of angels because we were being unjustly persecuted; In addition, we were not only looking to save ourselves, but also to save others. The odds were against us, but it seemed like we had the advantage. What else can a 14-year-old want? I enjoyed and admired my father. We lead an adventurous life and laughed together.
Not surprisingly, this was reused through Soros’ political enemies, regularly along with the false statement that he was a Nazi collaborator, such as an admission of ethical bankruptcy:
– Lloyd (pood57) 9 September 2017
– California4TRUMP (Tra777) September 5, 2017
But at no point did Soros say that “helping the Nazis” was the happiest moment of his life. As he repeated many times, as regards the euphoria of surviving the ultimate danger scenario that he and his circle of relatives would face, under the leadership and guardianship of his father, whom George Soros considered a heroic figure. “It’s his ultimate productive hour,” Soros said of his father in his 2007 book, The Age of Fallibility:
1944 has become the formative delight of my life. I was fourteen years old and had unlimited admiration for my father. I absorbed and embraced his worldview in bulk. As I have said occasionally, the year of the German profession was a strangely positive delight for me. We faced the danger of death and others perished around us, yet we checked not only to emerge victorious because we were able to help many others. We were in the aspect of angels and we triumphed against all odds. What more can a 14-year-old ask for?
Statement through the Anti-Defamation League
One of the ironies of these attacks on Soros based on his survival in the Nazi profession is that they use their own honest (and his father’s) memories of the jolgorio to defame him. As Abraham Foxman, Holocaust survivor and director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in reaction to Glenn Beck’s attempt to dismantle Soros in 2010, no matter what one thinks of the adult George Soros and his politics, the attacks are morally repugnant and unacceptable:
Glenn Beck’s description of George Soros’ movements during the Holocaust is completely inappropriate, offensive and exaggerated. For a political commentator or an artist to have the audacity to say, erroneously, that a Jewish child sends Jews to death camps, as part of a broader attack on Soros, is horrible.
While I too may not possibly agree with many of Soros’ perspectives and analyses on these issues, it is unacceptable to introduce such insinuations about his past. It is repugnant to hold a young man accountable for what was happening around him during the Holocaust as part of a broader effort to denigrate the boy.
The Holocaust was a terrible time and many others had to make possible heinous options to ensure their survival. George Soros has been frank about the reports of his training years and his family’s history, and that’s the point.
© 1995-2020 through Snopes Media Group Inc.
This curtain can be reproduced without permission.
Snopes and Snopes.com are registered service marks of Snopes.com
Your search didn’t yield any results. Your search terms may want to be reviewed or we may not have written an article on this topic.
One of the most productive tips for locating articles on our site is to avoid searches that are too long or too fast. Therefore, the optimal search strategy is to avoid pasting express words from parts (such as object lines and opening words) into our search engine and instead focus on choosing a few unique words or names to use as search terms.
If you still can’t locate the item you’re looking for, please use our shipping form to send it to us. We can’t communicate about it if we don’t know!
You’re in an article in a collection. View the entire collection.