As a chronicler of Northeast Kingdom history and the people who call it home, I have had the opportunity to meet and record the lives of many people from around the Kingdom. One of the most remarkable people I have interviewed was a man named George Hollos. A survivor of the Nazi horror that gripped Europe during World War II, George also spent six years in a Russian prison. George died on October 31 in St. Johnsbury.


One thing amazed me in listening to George talk about his years of suffering was his refusal to look back in hate at his captors. He would simple tell me, “If I hate, they will have won.” Those words influence me to this day, and will likely continue to do so for the remainder of my life. As a member of the Vermont House, I have even invoked his words on the House Floor. The following is a portion of a devotional I gave on the House Floor during the Spring 2009.


“As most of you know I record the history of Vermonters, Vermonters who come from every walk of life. Each of the hundreds of people I have interviewed have touched me in different ways, and some have even shaped my way of thinking. A Northeast Kingdom man named George is one of those people. Let me now tell you a little about George and why he left such a profound mark on my life.


‘Scott, if I hate, they will have won.’


I have never forgotten those words that George uttered to me as I interviewed him about his life several years ago. He explained that hate serves no useful purpose. All it does is slowly eat at the very soul of the hater but does nothing to the object of the hate.


George’s simple phrase forced me to reexamine my life. When I feel myself giving into the temptation of hate I think about George and his ability to forgive after the horrors that he experienced during an earlier chapter of his life, horrors that most of us couldn’t even imagine.
So what were the horrors that shaped George’s life? Born and raised in Hungary, when German forces swept into his country, he was drafted against his will into the German military. George was not a Nazi, for that matter he was a man of peace, a man who was dragged into a mad man’s war that threatened to encompass the world, a war that left millions of people dead.


Because of his resistance to conscription he was sent to the Russian front where Russian forces eventually captured him. He spent six years in a Russian prison camp, watching many of his comrades die of starvation. Others, he felt, died of despair and loss of hope. And yet others resorted to cannibalizing their dead comrades. George, on the other hand, said he remained convinced he’d survive the horrors of the camp, and refused to give up his hope and to give into hate and despair. He also understood the power of positive thinking, realizing if he held onto hope brighter days would come.


George credits his optimism with helping him survive what many of us might see as unsuvivable conditions. Brighter days did come for George. He was eventually freed. He made his life back in Hungary, married, and became a father. But with the violence of the Hungarian Revolution he again found himself in a world gone mad. In hiding, George, his wife, and five year old daughter, slipped out of the country for a better life in the United States. In time George and his family settled in Vermont where he lives to this day.


I often think about George and the horrors he told me about. He has seen horrors that probably none of us can understand. But what I remember most about George is his reaction to the people who perpetuated such cruelty on him.


“George, you must hate the Russians and the Germans because of what they did to you?” I asked him, referring not to the Russian and German people, but to his actual tormentors.
His words were simple, yet profound.


“Scott, if I hate, they will have won.”


Yes, George’s simple words left a lasting mark on my life. Here is a man of peace dragged into a living hell, but he is unwilling to have his life driven by hate and revenge. Instead he has worked to use that same energy to make the world a better place.”


Although George no longer walks this earth, a little bit of him lives on in me.

Rest in Peace George.