Tibor Rubin

Tibor Rubin (June 18, 1929 – December 5, 2015) was a Hungarian-born American soldier, Holocaust survivor, and recipient of the Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism as a rifleman with Company I, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division during the Korean War. Born in Pásztó, Hungary, Rubin endured the horrors of Mauthausen concentration camp as a teenager before immigrating to the United States in 1948 and enlisting in the Army to repay his American liberators.

In combat, Rubin single-handedly held a defensive position against North Korean forces for 24 hours near the Pusan Perimeter, inflicting heavy casualties and enabling his unit's withdrawal, and later manned a machine gun during a massive Chinese ambush until wounded and captured. As a prisoner of war from October 1950 to April 1953, he repeatedly risked execution to steal food for starving comrades, administered medical care using knowledge gained from his concentration camp experiences, and is credited with saving the lives of up to 40 fellow prisoners through his selfless actions.

Tibor Rubin was born on June 18, 1929, in Pásztó, Hungary, a rural town known as a shtetl with a Jewish community comprising approximately 120 families. He was one of six children—three sons and three daughters—born to Ferenc and Rosa Rubin; his father, a World War I veteran, worked as a shoemaker to support the family. The Rubins adhered to Orthodox Jewish traditions, including observance of religious holidays and community life centered around faith and local commerce in this pre-war setting of relative stability for Hungarian Jews.

Hungary's alignment with Nazi Germany from November 1940 onward introduced escalating anti-Semitic laws, but the German occupation on March 19, 1944, accelerated persecution dramatically under the direction of Adolf Eichmann's SS team. Hungarian authorities enforced yellow star requirements, property confiscations, and forced labor, targeting Jews like the Rubins who had previously faced discrimination but not mass violence.

By April 1944, Rubin's parents, Ferenc and Rosa, along with sisters Edith and Ilonka, were ghettoized in Hatvan before deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his older brother Emery had fled Pásztó earlier that year with a friend to evade conscription into Jewish forced labor battalions. At age 14, Rubin remained in the area amid these upheavals, as Hungary deported over 437,000 Jews between May and July 1944 in one of the Holocaust's swiftest operations.