And we kids stayed there. This is how I’d ended up alone. And I had no idea, I didn’t even know what was about to happen. I just remember that around 8 o’clock in the morning a very good friend of my mother, Aunt Juci, came into our apartment and said, “Robi, get your clothes, I’ll take you to your grandparents in Budapest. And that’s what happened
Robert Ratonyi was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1938, the year of Kristallnacht and when Nazi Germany annexed Austria into the Third Reich signaling Hitler’s intent to start World War II in 1939. He survived the Holocaust even though both his parents were deported, his father in 1942 and his mother in 1944, to different concentration camps. His mother survived and brought Robert up under the Soviet communist dictatorship. He was a freshman at the Technical University of Budapest, where he was caught up in the bloody uprising against the regime in October 1956. After the Russians crushed the uprising, he escaped to Austria and immigrated to Canada in February 1957, where he met his wife, who is also a Holocaust survivor from Hungary. In Montreal, Canada, Robert restarted his life, learned English, worked during the day and continued his education in an evening engineering program at a local university. In 1961, he transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, where he received his BSc. and MSc. degrees in engineering. He also earned an MSc. degree in management from Drexel University and began a new career in business and finance. Robert Ratonyi has developed a successful business career working for several large corporations, such as GE, Exxon, Xerox and Contel. After his corporate career, he started his own merger & acquisition business in Atlanta, Georgia in 1986. He also worked as an investment banker in Budapest, Hungary, after the fall of the “Iron Curtain,” for the United States Agency of International Development (USAID) in 1993 and 1994, to aid the Hungarian government in their privatization program. He is now semi-retired as a portfolio manager, and as a child Holocaust survivor speaks to middle and high school students regularly on behalf of the William Breman Jewish Heritage & Holocaust Museum, and on behalf of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust throughout Georgia at churches, educational institutions, and civic organizations. He and his wife live in Atlanta and are fervent supporters of the arts, education as well as local Jewish organizations.