OPC Book Night With Kati Marton

Kati Marton

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Kati Marton emigrated from Hungary as a child in 1957, but it wasn’t until she began to delve into the newly opened files of the Hungarian secret police (AVO) that she began to piece together the incredible real-life spy story that was her family’s history. The result of her research is Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America [Simon & Schuster]. Her father Endre and mother Ilona had survived World War II under Hungary’s pro-Nazi regime by downplaying their Jewish backgrounds and relying on the help of well-connected friends. After the war, the Martons resumed their lives in Budapest’s glittering café society, mixing with intellectuals, diplomats and opera singers. They openly flaunted their pro-Western ideas and tastes, most notably driving around Budapest in a white Studebaker convertible.

As the Cold War intensified, however, their lifestyle, jobs and political ideas were bound to make them targets of an increasingly paranoid Hungarian Communist regime. Both parents, Endre and Ilona, were the last independent journalists behind the Iron Curtain, working for the Associated Press and the United Press International respectively, when they were declared “enemies of the people” and imprisoned by the Communist regime.

As Kati researched her family history for this book she learned that her parents were under total surveillance for twenty years. Even her revered French nanny was an active agent of AVO. The files revealed terrifying truths: secret love affairs, betrayals inside the family circle, attempted suicides and torture as well as acts of stunning courage.

With the efforts of their friends in the journalistic and diplomatic communities and a temporary thaw in East-West relations after the death of Joseph Stalin, Ilona and Endre were abruptly released from prison. Marton movingly describes the joyous family reunion and how her family was immediately swept up in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. After the failure of the Revolution, the Martons realized that they must flee their beloved Hungary.

They emigrated to the U.S. and received a hero’s welcome. Endre Marton received a special George Polk Award and in 1957 he was given the OPC’s President’s Award for his dispatches from Eastern Europe which were virtually the only journalistic link to the outside world. At the OPC’s 1999 awards dinner when Richard Holbrooke (Kati Marton’s husband) was the keynote speaker he invited his father-in-law to attend the dinner as his guest. What Marton did not know was that the OPC and Holbrooke had arranged to surprise him with a duplicate OPC President’s Award which had been lost in the journey between Hungary and America.

Marton has written six books. She worked for ABC News as a foreign correspondent, reported for NPR and is on the Board of the CPJ. The Book Night, co-sponsored by the OPC and the Newswomen’s Club of New York, will begin with a reception at 6 p.m. followed by a talk at 6:30 p.m.