Pin commemorating a Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor’s receipt of the Congressional Medal of Honor

Tibor Rubin (1929-2015) was born in Pásztó, Hungary, to Ferenc (1888-1944) and Rosa (?-1931) Appel Rubin. Ferenc was married with a son, Miklós (1914 -?), when he fought as an Austro-Hungarian soldier in World War I (1914-1918). He was captured, spent six years as a prisoner of war, and was presumed dead. His wife remarried and settled in Khust, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine). After his release, Ferenc married Rosa, and they had four children: Imre (later Emery Irwin, 1922-1985), Irena (later Irene Huntly, 1924-1973), Edith (later Rittri, 1925-?), and Tibor. Ferenc worked as a shoemaker and ran his own store. Rosa died of cancer in 1931. Ferenc later married Rozsi Widowszky (1900-1944), a schoolteacher, and they had a daughter, Ilonka (1933-1944). Tibor’s family was very religious, and attended temple regularly. Tibor and his siblings attended the public and Jewish schools.

During the mid to late 1930s, the Hungarian government began aligning its policies with those of Nazi-controlled Germany. On September 1, 1939, Germany started World War II by invading Poland, and Hungary officially joined the Axis alliance in November 1940. Many Jewish men were conscripted into Hungarian forced labor battalions that support military actions, including Tibor’s half-brother, Miklós, in spring 1942 and his brother, Imre, in October 1943. In early March 1944, Ferenc was worried about Tibor being conscripted, so he asked a group of Polish Jews heading to the Swiss border to take him along. In response to Hungary’s armistice with the Allied powers the previous year, German forces occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. At the end of March, Tibor’s group was arrested while trying to cross the border from Italy into neutral Switzerland. They were all transferred to a forced labor camp in Budapest before being deported in May to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. To prevent Tibor from being assigned to a work detail, one of the men, Peter, told the guards that he was 11 years old, not 13.

In July 1944, the Polish men were sent to build a new camp in the woods nearby, and Peter had asked a guard to include Tibor. On dark, foggy, or rainy nights, Tibor began hiding in a space formed by his Polish companions inside a large pile of logs. When the coast was clear, he would sneak out to steal leftover food from the guards’ garbage drums behind the kitchen. As he gained confidence, Tibor was able to supplement the meager prisoner rations for himself and his friends. In November 1944, Tibor and the other prisoners returned to Mauthausen. Tibor was placed on a work detail, and not long after, Peter died. Around February 1945, Tibor reunited with his brother, Imre, who had been deported to a Mauthausen sub-camp, Donnerskirchen, in December 1944, before being transferred to the main camp.

Mauthausen was liberated on May 5 and 6, 1945, by the 11th Armored Division of the United States Army. Tibor was admitted to the army hospital with dysentery, and Imre was suffering from typhus. After they recovered, the brothers returned to Pásztó, where they reunited with Irena, who had hidden in Budapest with a Hungarian officer who protected her. Following their reunion, the siblings realized it was not safe to stay in Hungary, and travelled to Pocking displaced persons camp in the American Zone of Germany. In summer 1946, Imre got Tibor on a list for the Landshut camp for unaccompanied minors to increase his chances for immigration to the US. Tibor immigrated in May 1948, aboard the SS Marine Flasher, and settled in New York City.

Tibor, Irene, and Imre had assumed that their half-brother, Miklós, was dead, but later reconnected with him. He had escaped from his labor battalion, and joined the Czech resistance. After the war, Miklós joined the Czech army and reunited with his wife, Marketa, who had survived Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland, though their child had not. With forged identity papers acquired by Miklós, Irena assumed the identity of a deceased Czech woman, who had the same name and was born in 1926. As a Czech citizen, Irena was able to immigrate to Canada in November 1948. Imre immigrated to the US in July 1949, changed his name to Emery Irwin, and married a Polish survivor, Gloria Baker (nee Piekarek, 1928-2007), in September.

The siblings later learned that in April 1944, their parents, Ferenc and Rozsi, and sisters, Edith and Ilonka, were sent to the Hatvan ghetto. Ferenc was arrested on May 9, and offered a transfer due to his veteran status. His family could not join him, so he refused, and was deported to Auschwitz on May 14. Rozsi, Ilonka, and Edith were deported to Auschwitz in June. During selection at the camp, 10-year-old Ilonka and her mother, Rozsi, were killed in the gas chambers. In July, Ferenc was deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. In early December, Ferenc died of acute heart failure. In October 1944, Edith was deported to Horneburg concentration camp, a sub-camp of Neuengamme concentration camp, in Germany. She was transferred to Porta and Eberstadt concentration camps in early 1945, and was freed as part of the Swedish Bernadotte Campaign. In Sweden, Edith stayed with the Rittri family, and later married their son Anselm (1926-?).

In 1949, Tibor moved to California, and enlisted in the US Army the following year to fulfill a promise he made when he was liberated by American troops. He was assigned to Company I, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, and went to Korea with the unit after declining an offer to serve in a safe zone instead because he was not an American citizen. One of Tibor’s sergeants was very antisemitic and always gave him the most dangerous assignments. In response, Tibor went above and beyond the call of duty to save the lives of fellow soldiers. During an action in early November 1950, Tibor was badly wounded and captured by the Chinese Army. He was held at Camp 5 in North Korea as a prisoner of war. While imprisoned, he often stole food and shared it with fellow captives, despite the risk of being caught. He would tend to sick and wounded prisoners using knowledge learned as a concentration camp prisoner, and did his best to keep morale high. When the Chinese learned he was Hungarian, they offered to repatriate him, but he refused because he already saw himself as an American.

After 30 months of captivity, Corporal Tibor Rubin was released in April 1953. Later that year, he was honorably discharged and became a US citizen. His sister, Irena, had changed her name to Irene, and immigrated to the US in 1951. Irene married Joseph Huntly in 1955, and the couple had two children. Emery and Gloria adopted two children, moved to Los Angeles, and opened a successful liquor store. Miklós and his family later immigrated to Israel, and then to the US. In 1963, Tibor married Yvonne Meijers (b.1940), who survived the Holocaust in hiding in the Netherlands. The couple had two children, and Tibor became a partner in Emery’s liquor store. In 2005, after more than 25 years of petitions from fellow veterans and supporters on his behalf, Tibor was awarded the Medal of Honor by President George W. Bush for his actions in Korea.