The AVO Files

The AVO Files

Thesis statement

What findings Kati Morton made through her research was most appalling for her. However, these findings that mostly came from the AVO files enabled her to furnish an excellent piece of work through which she explicitly portrayed the brutalities of Soviet mechanism that they used to control the people.

Introduction

Kati Morton was a Hungarian. She was born to Ilona Matron and Endre Matron who were both journalists and had survived the Holocaust. They never spoke to her about the holocaust. They also served a period of two years in prison on charges of having spied for the Americans. Kati was 30 years old when she came to know that her grandparents from the side of her mother were Jewish. They had died in Auschwitz along with half a million Hungarian Jews. Her father was descended from a chief rabbi. Morton became a Jew after this discovery at which her father was displeased. It was a shock to her when she found out that she had Jewish ancestor. She had been raised as a catholic Christian and was never aware that her grandparents were Jews. Morton through these discoveries wanted to learn more about her family.

Discussion

Kati Morton hardly learnt anything from her parents. It was the research she dwelled into in later years of her life that allowed her to discover about her family. Her parents were not happy with Kati for having discovered the history of her family. In fact, her parents withheld as much information as they could from her. This Kati deeply regrets that many extraordinary facts of her life were not told to her by her parents. The reluctance of her parents to talk about her past used to frustrate her. Kati was desperate to learn her history. It was not just the history of her parents that she wanted to know, but she wanted to know as far back as to her grandparents. Show would ask her mother “Do I look like my grandmother?” There would be no forthcoming answer except tears. Kati notes in her book that she had tensions with her parents for not divulging her past history information (select.nytimes.com).

Obtaining no information from her parents, she was compelled to approach the AVO in an attempt to gain access to her parent's secret files. The AVO was the feared Hungarian secret police that had been involved in confining hundreds of people to the jail including Kati's parents. When she tried to obtain these files in Budapest, she was warned from doing so. “You are opening a Pandora's box,” she was told. However, she was adamant and proceeded with it. This was the main source of her research which revealed to her many things that she had previously not known. All this information had been hidden from her by her parents. Her family's history during the time of Nazis and the Communist was in shadows and the files revealed to her something that was terrifying. Though it revealed to her the deep family love ...