Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America

by Kati Marton

Book Overview

Acclaimed journalist Kati Marton recounts her family's harrowing history of being targeted by Communist operatives and her own father's imprisonment as Cold War tensions ran high across Eastern... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416586121
• ISBN13: 9781416586128
• Release Date: October 2009
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Great Story

I found myself thrown into the Marton family while I was reading this book. I thought the book was a great read as well very interesting. I myself could not put the book down. I find that all the family went through was mind boggling for I could not begin to tell you what I would do. I have read The Great Escape as well and found that to be excellent as well. If you like Biographies like I do this will be one you will not be able to put down

A note for Kati Marton

I can't find a link to write directly to Kati Marton, so will post this here in hopes that this will reach her eventually, as well as add a brief paragraph about the book: For Kati Marton re Enemies of the People: Not long ago I saw the review of your book in the NYT Friday book review e-mail, and remembered a lecture your father gave in the late 1970s, when I was a student at Georgetown's Foreign Service School. (I did, by the way, get the book from the library and read it cover to cover!) I don't remember much about the lecture, but I wanted you so much to know that your dad spoke about you with SUCH PRIDE! He was wearing a vest with his jacket, his hair was steely (salt and pepper) gray then... he walked back and forth on the stage of the lecture venue, and I remember him telling us about "Kati Marton" the journalist, his daughter, and how you had just begun working for ABC. He was clearly pleased as punch--you could almost see him swell with pride at how well you had done to be working there at such a young age. I remember almost nothing else about the lecture, alas, but I do remember his pride in you, and thought you might like to hear it. Congrats on a very well written biography/memoir--as the NYT reviewer said, it reads like a good spy thriller, but it is for real! Cheers, Sarah As for reviewing the book... it is a wonderful read even if you aren't particularly riveted by Cold War history. Kati's storytelling skills come into play, deftly weaving her child's memories and the facts she gathered using her reporter's skills. First person histories such as this are a future historian's dream resource, and I think they bring to life what would otherwise seem to be impersonal events; the reader moves from looking down on history from a bird's eye view to the perspective of a participant. The book moves along quickly--some of the 3-star reviews have complained that the book is personal, or would not be of interest to those not interested in Hungary. Not so! These reviewers seem to have missed the point of the book: it is a personal exploration into a skilled reporter's childhood, her parents' careers, and post-WW2 Hungary. I found the book to be riveting, always wondering what would happen next (while knowing Marton would escape, since I'd heard him speak in college!). While I have no burning desire to read the history of Hungary, I did find this book a revealing and valuable view into a family, a time, and a place, and recommend it.

A Journey Full of Courage

Part memoir, part historical narrative, Kati Marton spins a fantastic tale of her family's courageous journey to America. Her parents were international journalists in Budapest behind the Iron Curtain after WWII. Their reporting eventually led to them being imprisoned when Marton was a young girl. The author doesn't just relate her memories of the time, which are sometimes flawed because she was so young, she digs deeper. After her parents died several years ago, Marton began searching, obsessively as she states,for what really happened during those years. What she discovers is beyond anything imaginable. The result is a narrative filled in with historical documents, redacted goverment security files, FBI files, secret papers from Budapest and eye witness accounts of the nightmare the Martons endured. It gives readers an up close and personal glimpse of what those behind the Iron Curtain faced. The author does a remarkable job of mixing personal observations, emotions and history. We know what she is going through as she is uncovering the hidden truths, and we know what she felt as a child when her parents just "disappeared" from her life for months. It is well balanced, thoughtful, and informative, but most of all, it is a story of a family's strength of heart that helped them survive and led them to freedom.

An Absorbing, Thrilling True Story Played on a Worldwide Stage

"Enemies of the People" is the seventh book by Kati Marton, distinguished, award-winning former news correspondent for the ABC, and NPR, networks. She has previously penned New York Times best sellers Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History; and The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World. She is also author of Wallenberg: Missing Hero; The Polk Conspiracy; and A Death in Jerusalem. Marton, it turns out, is the daughter of Hungarian journalists of Jewish descent. For this book, she has delved into the files of that small country's former Communist government's once awesome secret police - apparently, with 21,000 employees, that organization dominated its society as brutally as the previous East German Communist government's famous, feared Secret Police, the Stasi; and discovered the truth about a black period in her childhood, when both her parents were arrested, and in jail, charged with spying for the United States. The author also conducted dozens of interviews among her parents' former friends, co-workers, and lovers, behind the former Iron Curtain, that kept East Europe in isolation from the world. The author was warned: "You are opening Pandora's box," when she filed to see the voluminous secret police files kept on her parents, still kept in Budapest. But she did. She discovered a lot she never knew about the pair; their anti-Nazi activities during the German occupation of World War II; their love affairs; their struggles with the Communist apparatchiks; their lives, surrounded by Communist informers, even down to her childhood French nanny. For, make no mistake about it: the Communist apparatchiks hated her parents: they were of high bourgeois background, well-educated and -cultivated, owners of beautiful furniture and pictures, and excellent bridge players that kept them popular at the British and American embassies. They were attractive people, who knew how to dress with style and taste, were fluent in French, English and German, drove a white Studebaker convertible, the only car even remotely like it in Hungary (the authorities would seize it, paint it black, and use it as a state car after their arrest). Furthermore, they were prominent; they had good jobs, he working for Associated Press (AP); she for United Press International (UPI), its chief competitor. The Hungarians were also anti-Semitic, whether they admitted it or not, and the Martons were Jews: the writer's maternal grandparents died at Auschwitz. Finally, unfortunately, the author's parents were also arrogant; they considered themselves untouchable, due to their wealth, charm and connections; he, at least, got a little reckless. The apparatchiks had been watching the pair a long time; finally Endre (Andrew) Marton gave them the excuse they'd been hoping for, and the Secret Police pounced, charged the pair with spying, leaving their two little girls crying alone in the street. The girls were eventually fostered ou

Intriguing and fascinating Study of Author's Parent's Life in Communist Hungary!

Kati Marton, the author wrote this book as a semi-biographical study of the life of her parents in Hungary and the United States. Her parents were brilliant, Jewish intellectuals from the Hungarian upper middle-class, at at time when such attributes were not at all of value to those controlling Hungary. The book describes the lives of her parents as journalists for American wire services, as well as touching upon the Nazi-period in Hungary. The parents both were witty, well-read and most sophisticated members of the "chattering" and the intellectual classes in Hungary. Well-read, well-traveled, they were almost inevitably the targets of the Communists and the AVO (Hungarian Secret Police) in post-war Hungary. The book includes descriptions of her parent's lives as seen through the eyes of a little girl, but also as seen through the eyes of the grown-up woman who has just read the files of the secret police which meticulously document the strains under which the parents were forced to operate. Both parents were arrested, spent very difficult times in prison, while their 2 daughters were forced to live lives of penury with strangers. Both parents were incredibly brave in their attempts to both humor the Communists while providing accurate news of Hungary to the outside world, also during the Hungarian Revolution. The most intriguing aspect of this entire tale is how the daughter manages to read her way through the meticulously-kept, secret-police files on both of her parents. While being both shocked and angered by what she reads, she manages to absorb the information and write of it within the frame of reference of the times. Her parents emerge as courageous and decent people, her father perceived as being more than a bit the idealist. Uncomfortably, for the author, her parents emerge from their shields of idealism into the cold and unrelenting glare of reality. This is the only way that they were able to survive and function in Communist Hungary. The real surprise is that, even when safe in the USA, the parents still must employ more than a few of their survival tricks gleaned from the bag of those needed back in Hungary. A very good and highly-recommended book for those interested in descriptions of life in post-war Eastern Europe. Although both parents were very secular Jews and raised their daughters as Catholics, this book is intriguing for those wishing to know more of Judaism under the Communists and the NAZI's. It emphasizes the sacrifices made to their own consciences by those who chose to survive, even to the point of forcing a "safe" religion upon their progeny. Do read this, also read the book about Wallenburg written by the same author.