Fighting tyranny is difficult, dangerous

EDWARDS – Doing God’s work can be tough. Tibor Baranski knows first hand just how tough working for the Lord is – especially when it comes to facing down tyranny.Baranski, the father of Singletree resident Kathy Spangler, spent most of his early adult life fighting two of the most frightening forces of the 20th century: Nazism and communism.As a young Catholic seminary student in his native Hungary, Baranski came home to Budapest shortly after Nazi Germany had occupied the country in March of 1944. It was then he started the dangerous, exhausting work of rescuing Jews from the Nazis’ clutches.His job started small, when he tried to help some Jewish neighbors of his parents.After the Germans occupied the country, the only chance Jews had to save themselves from the Nazis’ genocidal “final solution” was if they could somehow get “protection letters” from one of five embassies – the Swiss, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese and Vatican – in Budapest. All the embassies were swamped with requests and the lines were long. Dressed in his priest’s hassock, Baranski quickly made his way to the front of the line and was allowed into the embassy. Although still technically a priest in training, no one questioned the young man wandering the embassy’s halls.Baranski eventually found the office of Bishop Angelo Rotto, the Vatican’s ambassador to Hungary. He was able to secure a protection letter for his neighbors, and within the next few days, several more Jewish families.After two days, he had a job at the embassy.”In two weeks, I was the executive secretary,” Baranski said.That’s when the Lord’s work started to get hard.Hiding out, holding onBaranski and Rotto were eventually able to issue about 12,000 protection letters. But a phone call from Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi officers in charge of the program to exterminate Jews in Europe, slashed that number.

“He said, ‘You’re probably idiots to do this,'” Baranski said. Not knowing who he was talking to, he repaid Eichmann’s scorn in kind, saying, “I thought I was talking to a German officer, not a German scoundrel.”Eichmann ordered that only 3,000 Jews would be able to keep their protection letters, leaving Baranski the job of telling 9,000 people their letters were no longer valid.”After a day and a half I went back to my room and cried,” Baranski said. “I called the office the next day and said I can’t do this any more.”But Baranski’s job took a new turn, helping Jewish families go into hiding around Budapest. “By hiding them in old houses and caves, we were able to protect between 8,000 and 12,000 Jews,” he said “We had hiding places in old factories.”While Rotto was talking to the Nazis, Baranski was out and about in Budapest, taking food, water and supplies to families. Both jobs were harrowing, and dangerous.”Sometimes there was no time to eat,” Baranski said. “Sometimes I slept two, maybe three hours a night.”While Baranski’s clerical collar and robes helped protect him, there were no guarantees of safety, and at least once he found himself facing the wrong side of a German weapon. Gestapo officers having a bad day could just as easily shoot a civilian as let him pass, and the protection letters carried by Jews were too often mere pieces of paper.In that climate, why did Baranski risk his own life for others?”I just tried to be an honest Christian,” he said. “You shouldn’t hesitate to do the right thing. Other people were in danger, and Christ wants me to help.”So for more than a year Baranski, Rotto and others persevered, not knowing the terror of the swastika would soon be replaced by the hammer and sickle.The communistsThree years ago the Hungarian government opened a new museum, The House of Horror. Housed in a grand, old building that served as both Nazi and Communist Party headquarters, the building has two sets of exhibits. On the left side are artifacts of the Nazis. The right side is dedicated to communism.”If you want to think like a cartoonist, Hitler and Stalin would be two cherries on the same tree,” Baranski said. “There was no difference.”

Baranski and his countrymen learned that lesson the hard way, when Hungary’s Russian “liberators” rolled through the country, imposing their will. Baranski was arrested, deported and sent on a 16-day march during which he ate four times. The march killed many and might have killed him if not for some intervention one day.One Russian soldier knocked the gun out of a comrade’s hand before Baranski was about to be shot. Later that day, the same soldier put Baranski, then near collapse, in a line of sick prisoners, ensuring he would get medical treatment. “I don’t know what happened to the rest of the men,” he said. From 1948 to 1953, Baranski was in a communist prison, released following Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s death. He slipped across the border to Austria at the start of Hungary’s ill-fated 1956 revolution, seeking western help for the effort. That help didn’t come, and after little more than a week, Soviet tanks and troops brutally crushed the rebellion.Although Baranski was sent back to Hungary, he was able to slip out, winding up in an Italian refugee camp. It was there he met Katalin Kornis, the woman who would become his wife.The couple, along with Katalin’s son from a previous marriage, ended up on a ship to Canada, settling first in Toronto, then moving to Buffalo, N.Y.Through the rest of his adult life, Baranski was a teacher. He’s still teaching today.Speaking truth to evilSince his escape from Hungary, Baranski has continued to speak out about tyranny. “We were entirely aware of what he went through,” daughter Kathy Spangler said. “From an early age we heard the stories. My daughter is six now and I’m teaching her.”Teaching kids about the horrors humans are capable of is critical, Spangler said.”We explain it very simply to her,” Spangler said. “She can understand good and bad, right and wrong… I take them to Hungary every year now.

Those are the things Baranski shares with people of all ages. He’s planning two speeches at the St. Clare parish in Edwards on Tuesday – one for kids in the morning, one for adults in the evening. It’s just another stop on a life-long journey to tell as many people as he can about the awful things of which people are capable, he says. By his own estimation, he’s given more than 1,500 speeches over the years, to both adults and kids.”I talk about the same things,” he said. “To the kids, I just talk at a different level.”And, he said, few people leave unmoved.Staff Writer Scott N. Miller can be reached at 949-0555, ext. 613, or smiller@vaildaily.com.Vail Daily, Vail Colorado