KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.
KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.
KROFT: I mean, that’sthat sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Mr. SOROS: Notnot at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’tyou don’t see the connection. But it wasit created nono problem at all.
KROFT: No feeling of guilt?
Mr. SOROS: No.
KROFT: For example that, ‘I’m Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.’ None of that?
Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I cI could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that waswell, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in marketsthat if I weren’t thereof course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else wouldwouldwould be taking it away anyhow. And it was thewhether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So theI had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
...and this is why he left Hungary. His neighbors would have strung him up after the war.