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Amnesty International Group 22 Pasadena/Caltech News Volume XIX Number 8, August 2011 Next Rights Readers UPCOMING EVENTS meeting: Thursday, August 25, 7:30 PM. Monthly Sunday, Sept. 18, 6:30 PM Meeting. Note new location at Avery Center. See Coordinator’s Column for more info. Vroman’s Bookstore Help us plan future actions on Sudan, the 695 E. Colorado Boulevard ‘War on Terror’, death penalty and more. In Pasadena Tuesday, September 13, 7:30 PM. Letter writing meeting at Caltech Athenaeum, corner Enemies of the People of Hill and California in Pasadena. This By Kati Marton informal gathering is a great way for newcomers to get acquainted with Amnesty! Sunday, September 18, 6:30PM. Rights About the Author Readers Human Rights Book Discussion group. This month we read “Enemies of the Kati Marton, an award- People” by Kati Marton. winning former NPR and ABC News correspondent, is the author of Hidden Power: COORDINATOR’S CORNER Presidential Marriages That Hi everyone Shaped Our History, a New York Times bestseller, as Thanks a million to Lucas, Joyce, and Stevi for well as Wallenberg, The Polk doing the coordinator’s column and putting the Conspiracy, A Death in newsletter together for July. It looked great! We Jerusalem, and a novel, An American Woman. were on vacation, a combo plane and car trip to Mother of a son and a daughter, she lives in the Southeastern US. We had a great time and New York and was married to Richard visited 10 cities and 7 states in 12 days! High- Holbrook. lights were the swamp tour in Louisiana, the Smokey Mountains National Park (mama and BOOK REVIEW by ALAN FURST bear cubs sighting!!), the Emerald Coast of Published: October 30, 2009,New York Times Florida, Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, S. Carolina. The year is 1955; most of the world has taken PLEASE NOTE: The location for our August sides in the cold war. In Budapest, behind the 25th monthly meeting has changed - see the Iron Curtain, a little girl, 6 years old, lives one of updated website. the more privileged lives in that city. In an http://www.its.caltech.edu/~aigp22/map.shtml apartment on a tree-lined street on one of Buda’s Here's the description: For August 2011 only, hills, she is adored by her attractive parents, our meeting room has changed to the conference prominent journalists; she wears pink sweaters room of Avery Center at the southwest corner of and cute shoes — patent leather Mary Janes — Del Mar and Holliston. There is parking on from America; she loves going to school; she Holliston or in the parking lots off of Chester, loves her playmates. But then, on an icy just south of Del Mar. Entrance to Avery is from February night at 2 in the morning, the light the walkway south of it and the conference goes on in the room she shares with her sister room is on the 2nd floor, there is an elevator in and life changes forever. the foyer. Con cariño, Kathy Kati Marton, center, with her mother and sister. ENEMIES OF THE RIGHTS READERS PEOPLE Human Rights Book Discussion Group My Family’s Journey to America Keep up with Rights Readers at By Kati Marton http://rightsreaders.blogspot.com 1 Excerpt: ‘Enemies of the People’ (November 1, Marton is a highly respected author and 2009) journalist. She has worked for ABC News as a “‘Get into our bed,’ my mother said. As we foreign correspondent, reported for NPR, won slowly awoke, one of the searchers moved in. many awards, headed the Committee to Protect Like a hunter stalking big game, he sank his Journalists and worked with the International knife into our beat-up stuffed rocking horse. Rescue Committee. So, some years after the Straw spilled out of my oldest possession, as my collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989, when the sister and I ran to the room next door and dove records of secret police operations in Hungary into our parents’ bed. We were too dazed to ask became available, Marton knew she had to read where Papa was. Or did we know somehow? the file (one of the biggest, it turned out) on ‘Elvittek,’ Hungarian for ‘they took him away,’ herself and her family. It was, after years of was a word I often heard as a child. So now concern for the victims of totalitarian states, her turn. my father had been elvittek, taken away.” Four months later, her mother was also elvittek. Taken And what came next, “Enemies of the People,” away. has all the magnetism and, yes, the excitement, To many in Budapest, this would come as no of the very best spy fiction. But would that it surprise. Endre and Ilona Marton were a high- were fiction. Marton’s a gifted writer, and she profile couple, intellectual celebrities. He was knows about suspense. As you watch the AVO the Associated Press correspondent in Budapest, watching the Martons, as you see Endre Marton, she reported for the rival U.P. Almost all foreign a sophisticated and courageous man of culture, journalists had been forced to leave Hungary, slowly crushed by interrogators in prison, you but the Martons, Hungarians who spoke and wonder when he’ll begin to cooperate, to give wrote near-native English, seemed invulnerable. them what they want: names, dates, acts of Endre Marton dressed well, smoked a pipe, espionage. There’s some of Arthur Koestler’s drove a white Studebaker convertible and “Darkness at Noon” in this book, and more than applied his Hungarian irony and wit to the a little of “The Lives of Others,” the German film gross distortions of government press releases. about the Stasi, the East German secret police. The Martons were welcome at the American Here is one Dr. Leo Benko — could Graham Embassy and played bridge with American Greene have come up with a better name? — diplomats. So, they must be spies. Thus the planted by the AVO on Endre Marton as his AVO, the ferocious secret police of the cellmate: “I do not perceive the slightest trace of Hungarian Stalinist state, was ordered to regret in him. During our first days together he accumulate sufficient evidence of espionage so was quite worked up, but lately he is rather that the Martons could be arrested. It took some broken in spirit and apathetic and doesn’t seem time, but by 1955, the AVO had what it needed. to notice anything around him. In my Little wonder. As the head of the Hungarian opinion, . if he is still withholding any secrets, state security archives would put it, many years then, knowing his nature, there is only one way later, “Everybody in your circle, whether your to force him to confess: by threatening his wife, parents trusted or did not trust them, was and, even more, his children. I am certain, that if informing on them.” And so they were — the his wife and, even more, his children were governess, the dentist, the colleague. Recruited, placed in harm’s way, there is not a secret that most often (though not always) intimidated, by he would not disclose to save them.” What the AVO, they reported every contact with the Benko may not have known, and what Endre Marton family. Meanwhile, AVO surveillance Marton certainly didn’t know, was that his wife teams followed the Martons, bugged their was in a cell just floors away. telephone and opened their mail, filling file after There are other villains — what else would you file with the details of Kati Marton’s childhood. call him? — in this book, but there are also With an unforeseen, to say the least, result: heroes. When the Martons are finally allowed to “Enemies of the People,” Kati Marton’s seventh meet, in an office in the prison, an AVO major book, a powerful and absolutely absorbing leaves the room, permitting them a moment of narrative of her parents’ journey — a series of privacy (maybe). As Ilona Marton takes her escapes, from Hitler, from Stalin, eventually to husband’s hands in hers, she whispers, in America. Though if you think the AVO left them English, “Darling . the Americans will free alone after that, you’re wrong. us.” And so they did. Though there are American villains here, including one in the 2 embassy who spied for the Hungarians, A Trip to Washington D.C. for Falun American news media and diplomatic efforts Gong and Human Rights in China did save their lives. But the true central character in “Enemies of the People” is By Wen Chen surveillance itself — the operatives, the informants, the cameras and microphones — This July 20, my husband Daniel, our 7-year-old and what it becomes once committed to paper: daughter Sylvia, and I visited Washington D.C. It was a special trip to us, because July 20 is a “Surveillance record, Aug. 27, 1954: very sad date to all Falun Gong practitioners. Twelve years ago on this date, the Chinese “10:05 a.m. [Marton] in a gray and black striped Communist Party (CCP) ordered the crackdown suit . and his two little girls left their home on practitioners of Falun Gong - a peaceful body and got into car (license plate CA894) drove to and mind exercise. Although Falun Gong was Alkotas Utca 1, where we photographed him just introduced to the public in 1992, its health stepping out of the car. He then went into a stationery store with the little girls. Inside, he benefits and the principle of "Truth- Compassion-Tolerance" attracted over 70 bought them school supplies.

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