George Vari, a Jewish Life Wasted

Gyuri bacsi, aka George Vari, was a Hungarian Jewish engineer born in the same village as Sarkozy, the French President (another Hungarian Jew). Vari (meaning "of the castle", that was his Hungarianized name), escaped in 1956 to Austria. We may have shared the same refugee camp in Vienna, an army camp. We emigrated to Argentina, he went to Canada and was very successful. In Toronto married, no children. He lays in a Catholic cemetery. Donated millions to universities, mostly to Toronto's York University.  Pic.: the George Vari Engineering and Computing Center. A typical Hungarian Jewish story of my generation. I deeply identify with people like Vari, they are my better me and I am - in my way - them.


Why am I writing about him? Because in the Vari Hall that carries his name, Arab students carried out a violent mini-pogrom against three Israeli students who came to speak. These things make my blood to boil, because I had met many Jewish donors like George Vari who arrived to the annual meeting of the Board of Directors of Tel Aviv University. They shared with me their life history and their hard way to financial success (nobody else had the patience to hear the poignant tales of these very rich men and women). While touring the campus, Palestinian students organized noisy protests and I was at a loss how to justify their generous donations for buildings and laboratories and scholarships - only to be used and abused by our enemies.

The hate showered on the Jewish boys and girls in the Vari Hall of York University made me cringe, seeing my people's generosity serving anti-Semitic hate. In my times at TAU, the university "sold" Jewish donors scholarships for Arab students, who wrote - under some compulsion - shameless fake thank you letters detailing how they loved Jews. I am tempted to advise to Jewish philanthropes NOT to give a cent to them, not a single dollar for projects that, eventually will promote their hate against us, but give their resources - and these are very generous people - to Jewish causes alone. Say no to University of Tel Aviv and other non-Jewish Universities. Specially say no to York University and the likes of it.