Robert Ratonyi

Yizkor Featured Speaker

April 9 | 11:30 AM EDT

Joining us during Yizkor service on the last day of Passover, Robert Ratonyi, author of From Darkness into Light: My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom, will speak about his experiences before, during, and after the war as a child survivor of the Holocaust.

Join us during Yizkor service in Epstein Sanctuary or online.

Robert Ratonyi was born in Budapest in 1938, the year of Kristallnacht, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria into the Third Reich, signaling Hitler's intention to start the Second World War in 1939. He survived the Holocaust, despite both of his parents being deported, his father in 1942 and his mother in 1944, to different concentration camps. His mother survived and raised Robert during the Soviet communist dictatorship. He was a freshman at the Budapest University of Technology, where he became involved in the bloody uprising against the regime in October 1956. After the Russians crushed the uprising, he fled to Austria and emigrated to Canada in February 1957, where he met his wife Eva, also a Hungarian Holocaust survivor. 

In Montreal, Canada, Robert restarted his life, learning English, working during the day, and continuing his studies 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 bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering. He also received a Master of Science Degree in Management from Drexel University and embarked on a new career in business and finance. 

Robert Ratonyi had a successful business career at several large companies, such as General Electric, Exxon, Xerox , and Contel. After a corporate career, in 1986, he and his wife started a mergers and acquisitions firm in Atlanta, Georgia. After the fall of the "Iron Curtain", he also worked as an investment banker in Budapest for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1993 and 1994 to help the Hungarian government's privatization program. 

As a child Holocaust survivor, he regularly speaks to Middle and High school students on behalf of the William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum and the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust. He has spoken at churches, educational institutions, and civic organizations throughout Georgia. He and his wife live in Atlanta and are avid supporters of the arts, education, local Jewish organizations, and Israel. 

In 2020, he published the memoirs of his early life in a book titled From Darkness into Light – My Journey Through Nazism, Fascism, and Communism to Freedom.