“The day he introduced himself Peyton made it known that he had no use for minorities, and Jews in particular,” writes Cohen. He would forever change Tibor Rubin’s life. He went through basic training in the United States and advanced infantry training in Japan and met a man assigned to his company, Master Sergeant Arthur Peyton, who hated Jews, non-whites and others. He accepted military discipline, which was easy after all he had gone through in Europe.” “He passed all the physical testing quickly qualified for a ‘sharpshooter’ badge, which he wore with great pride. Finally, at age 20, he passed the written exam and was accepted. He tried to enlist more than once but his poor English language skills caused him to fall short each time. But Rubin had a reply: “Ever since the Army saved me from the Nazis, I promised myself to pay them back.” But Rubin had another career on his mind – to join the U.S. He then found work as a cashier at a local grocery. Rubin’s first job was in a slaughterhouse in New York City. consulate due to the low immigration quota for Hungarians.įinally, in 1948, three years after the end of World War II, Tibor Rubin was admitted as a refugee to America. Although desperate to go to America, Rubin was turned down during an in interview at a U.S. Their parents and sister Ilonka perished in the Holocaust. Rubin, his sister Irene and his brother Emery spent a year in displaced persons camp. It is estimated between 119,000 and 195,000 people died in Mauthausen and its associated camps. Army’s 11 th Armored Division, commanded by General George Patton, liberated the camp. Or that, in a little more than a month, 430,000 Jews had been uprooted from the Hungarian countryside, and that most of them were already dead.” “Tibor had no way of knowing that at that moment, the entire Jewish community had been removed from Pásztó. “Two weeks into the long walk to Switzerland, Tibor gave up counting the days,” writes Daniel M. During the trek to the border, Tibor would run off and find food for the group, a skill that would later prove invaluable. In March 1944, Tibor set off on a journey accompanied by seven Polish Jews. In 1944, with news spreading that German Gestapo were arresting Hungarian Jews, Tibor’s parents decided to send him, then 13 years old, to Switzerland via Italy. In addition to his mother and father, Rubin had three sisters, Irene, Edith and Ilonka, an older brother Emery and a half-brother Miklos. Like other Jewish families, the Rubins faced increasing danger as fascism rose in Europe. Tibor Rubin was born June 18, 1929, in Pásztó, Hungary.

Do medal of honor recipients get paid