"Whatever
be thy fate today, remember
This, too, shall pass
away."
 -
Old Proverb
DEDICATION
"TO
MY FATHER AND MOTHER
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
WITH ALL MY LOVE"
-- George Rony
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In
setting down the tumultuous record of his
thirty-nine years, George Rony has done
much more than write an autobiography. The
almost continuous adventures that he
describes took place during the crucial
moments in the history of three European
countries. "Born on Black Sunday in the
Czar's St. Petersburg," he lived his
boyhood in the midst of the cold,
starvation and turmoil which accompanied
the transformation of that city into
modern Leningrad.
He
began early on his profession of making
motion pictures, and one day he was so
struck by the appearance of a man in a
crowd that he singled him out with his
camera: later the man became known to the
world as Joseph Stalin. This incident set
a pattern for George Rony's singular
ability to put his finger on the
significant person or event.
After
two attempts to escape from his native
country--one through Finland and one
through Siberia--George Rony found himself
in Germany in time to live through its
years of crisis. There his fearlessness in
documenting the events around him led to
the banning of his films and his flight
from the Reich.
In
France, once more, he arrived just in time
to record disintegration and upheaval and
once more was forced to flee--this time to
the permanent security of the United
States.
Despite
his unceasing exposure to the chaos around
him, Rony still had time and appetite for
an intense personal life. His account of
the two Russian women who have meant much
to him is as absorbing as anything in his
narrative, reading, indeed, more like
fiction than the sober record of fact
which it is. His professional life has
been equally fascinating. The film
collection he began as a boy grew until it
became the greatest library of historical
films in Europe, and the pictures he
himself made--like "The Wooden Crosses" or
"From Lenin to Hitler"--have marked him as
a man of high skill in his
profession.
THIS
TOO SHALL PASS AWAY illustrates the effect
upon an ambitious and sensitive young man
of the major events of this century.
Though written with a swift pace of a
Dumas adventure tale, it embodies a
commentary on these events, as well as a
deeply sincere plea for spiritual
regeneration and renewed faith in a
war-torn world.
CREATIVE
AGE PRESS
11 East 44th Street New
York
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