Medal of Honor Winner: Corporal Tibor “Ted” Rubin
Meet Tibor “Ted” Rubin, survivor of the Nazi death camps, and an American hero:
Nazi guards made sure Rubin understood despair at the age of 13. A Hungarian Jew, he was forced into the Mauthausen Concentration Camp toward the end of World War II. But Rubin defied odds: He survived. After the war he moved to New York, and as a show of appreciation to his new country, joined the same Army that liberated him from hell on earth.
From the horror of the Holocaust arose a bravery that few can match. Rubin went on to fight in the Korean War and was taken prisoner by the Chinese communists…
Medal of Honor recipient was just doing his duty…
Garden Grove, California’s Tibor Rubin risked his life for fellow POWs in 1950s.
June 2005
GARDEN GROVE – It’s been a hectic time for Tibor Rubin. The 76-year-old traveled to Washington, D.C., last month to pick up the Medal of Honor from President George W. Bush for his bravery during the Korean War.
For the last three weeks, Rubin has been fielding phone calls for invitations to fancy dinners and speaking engagements. He even got an offer to serve as grand marshal for an area parade. On Tuesday, the Garden Grove City Council honored him.
Rubin is the 10th Orange County resident to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military medal for valor in combat. Rubin said he doesn’t feel like a hero for saving the lives of dozens of his fellow soldiers while at a prisoner-of-war camp. The Hungarian immigrant and Nazi death-camp survivor said he was just doing his duty.
Q. How did you find out that you were going to receive the award?
A. Someone called my house on July 27. My wife picked up the phone. He said, “I’d like to talk to Mr. Tibor Rubin.” She told him, “He’s sleeping right now, but I can take a message.” He said, “I’d like to talk to him because I am calling from the White House.” She was all shook up. She came in my room and said, “Teddy, wake up. Somebody is calling you from the White House.”
I didn’t know if I was dreaming or what. I said, “Are you kidding me?” She wasn’t. And I talked to a very nice man. He said, “Mr. Rubin, sir, I am assistant to President Bush, and I would like to congratulate you. You’re going to get the Medal of Honor, and we’d like to make a date to present it to you at the White House.” I said, “Whatever date he can make, I’m gonna be there.” It took a couple days to sink in. Did someone pull a joke? We could not figure it out. It didn’t register. It was something we waited 54 years for, so it’s not so easy to believe.
Q. How was your day at the White House?
A. Everyone was so nice to us. They paid for the hotel, flight and the food. They treated me like a king. Guards were dressed up so beautifully and saluted us. Bodyguards took us wherever we liked. We had a tremendous time.
The president was so nice. He gave me a picture and signed it and gave it to my daughter. Then he put his arm around me, and we walked down the red carpet together.
He made a beautiful speech about me. I never heard anything like that. I was in a daze. So many women were giving me kisses that my lips were swelling. I was going to have to put ice on them.
Q. Why did you join the military?
A. The American forces liberated me (from the Nazis). When they found me I was just bones and lice and disease and filth. So they were very nice to me, and they put me in a home for children who lost their parents. So I promised if the Lord helped me – and my dream was to go to America – I was going to join the Army and repay the United States for what the Army did for me.
Q. It’s taken more than 50 years for you to receive the Medal of Honor. Do you feel any animosity that you were overlooked or discriminated against because of your Jewish background?
A. I don’t. It was the climate at the time. There was bigotry and anti-Semitism and prejudice. That’s why Congress created a bill to force them to look over all the veterans who were recommended for a Medal of Honor.
I don’t hate nobody because life is so short. If you feel hate for your fellow man … you’ll only hurt yourself. You hate yourself inside and accomplish nothing. I have nothing against the Germans – they killed 98 percent of my family – or the North Koreans and nothing against the Chinese. Because I do believe in God. He is the only one that’s going to take care of it.
Q. For nearly a month everyone has described you as a hero. Who inspires you, and who are your heroes?
A. Everyone who was nice to me was a hero. Not everyone liked Jews. Anybody who just tolerated us was a hero and a good person.
My father was a hero. My mother, Rosa, was always a hero. She taught me that we are all brothers and sisters. She had so many good qualities. She taught me to treat people the way you want to be treated.
For her it was the most important thing was a mitzvah, which is to do a good deed regardless of religion. Just help your fellow man – and I did that. To me, it’s just a mitzvah what I did.
My little sister Ilonka was in Auschwitz and taken into the gas chamber, and my mother went along. She didn’t have to but she couldn’t leave the little one. I think about what my mother did, and I would have done the same.
BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY – MORE ON “TEDDY”
WASHINGTON – Tibor Rubin wasn’t a U.S. citizen when he joined the Army and fought in the Korean War. But the man born in Hungary had made a vow when U.S. troops liberated him from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
And that vow took him to killing fields, frozen mountain ranges, a Chinese prisoner of war camp, and Friday, to the White House.
“When they freed me, I promised that I would join the U.S. Army and try to give back because they saved my life,” Rubin, who lives in Garden Grove, said outside the White House shortly after receiving the nation’s highest military decoration.
Rubin said he always had more guts than brains. It was these guts that helped him survive, and it was for those guts that President George W. Bush presented the 76-year-old with the Medal of Honor more than a half century after he returned from Korea.
Friends, family and fellow soldiers filled the White House’s East Room. Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and first lady Laura Bush were some of the notables who attended the overdue ceremony.
Bush praised the war veteran with simple accounts of Rubin’s combat record. The stories included a description of Rubin’s lone defense of a hill against a North Korean assault to allow his fellow soldiers to retreat. Later in the war, he was captured and stole food from Chinese guards to give to fellow prisoners. He also turned down an offer from the Chinese to return to his native Hungary with the promise of money, food and a good job.
“(The Medal of Honor) is given for acts of valor that no superior could rightly order a soldier to perform,” Bush said. “And that is what we mean by ‘above and beyond the call of duty.’ ”
Congress passed legislation in 2001 requiring the Pentagon to determine if 138 Jewish veterans deserved decorations. Rubin is the first such soldier to receive the Medal of Honor and credited Bush with rectifying the wrong.
“They looked over our papers and realized that it was wrong, and I have lot to thank him for because he signed the bill and without him I wouldn’t be here,” Rubin said. He stood alone on stage with Bush, and, without uttering a word, was the center of attention. He fidgeted as he moved his hands from behind his back into the pockets of his navy blue suit and back, alternately looking at the president and a large group of friendly faces in the audience.
Before placing the blue ribbon and medallion around his neck, Bush turned Rubin to face his family and a gathering of soldiers who had fought with him 50 years ago. In order to watch Rubin receive the medal, the onlookers farthest from the stage strained to see. Soon, the entire audience was on its feet.
Citing affidavits filed by soldiers in Rubin’s unit, Scripps Howard News Service has reported that the recognition came so long after Rubin last wore the uniform because his sergeant was a fierce anti-Semite who refused to recommend the young corporal for commendation and often gave him the most difficult and dangerous assignments.
But despite facing some of the same bigotry that led to his imprisonment as a teenager and prompted the killing of his parents and sister in a Nazi concentration camp, Rubin said he feels no animosity for the Army.
“I’m not angry with the Chinese, I’m not angry with the North Koreans, I’m not angry even with the Germans because I figure the Lord is going to take care of them,” he said. “And if I’m going to be angry and everything, I’m only going to hurt myself.”
Rubin seemed to enjoy his time in the spotlight. He looked disappointed when reporters ran out of questions. But he became visibly emotional and had to pause twice while talking about the debt he felt to the United States for liberating him. When he was asked whether he planned to visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum, he paused. He’d been there on Thursday.
“That was tough. I couldn’t even talk,” he said.