Tibor Baranksi Interview

Abstract

This interview is in two parts; an interview with Tibor Baranski by Sharon Wallenberg, and a presentation by Baranski to the Jamestown Community College Forum . The interview discusses Baranski's experiences growing up as a Catholic in Austro-Hungary, the shifting political climate after the first World War, the growth of the Nazi Party in Hungary and the lack of overall public resistance to its growth, the Soviet occupation of Hungary and his arrest by the Soviets, and his time in seminary. The primary focus of Baranski's interview describes his departure from seminary and the planning and undertaking of his efforts to help nearly ten thousand Hungarian Jews to escape the Holocaust with the help of Catholic Church officials and Hungarian embassy officials, who provided him with falsified papal documents and letters, and diplomats, including Raoul Wallenberg, who helped with intervention and escape efforts. The forum presentation focuses on Baranski's ethical and religious reasons to engage in the liberation of Hungarian Jews, things considered in the orchestration of their liberation such as the availability of necessary food and medical supplies, and his experience of being arrested by Soviet forces during the Russian invasion of Hungary and spending five years in a Soviet prison, and is followed by a Q&A session and the reading of Baranski's "New American Creed."