They reunited with Irene in their hometown of Pásztó, but deciding to leave Hungary, the three went to a displaced persons camp in Pocking, Germany. On May 5, 1945, Rubin and Emery were liberated by the US Army. Image from the Bundesarchiv: Bundesarchiv, Bild 192-048 / CC-BY-SA 3.0. Here, young Jewish prisoners are forced to play leapfrog. (Some sources say Ferenc was transferred to Buchenwald and died there.)Īt Mauthausen, prisoners experienced various types of mistreatments, from medical experiments, to heavy manual labor, and even forced physical exercise, all meant to wear down prisoners. Rubin’s parents were less fortunate they and Edith perished in Auschwitz in 1944. Irene managed to survive the war in Budapest. Sometime in 1944, Ferenc, Rosa, and Rubin’s sisters, Edith and Ilonka, were sent to Auschwitz. Rubin was deported to Mauthausen, and though his brother Emery was there, it wasn’t until the winter that the brothers were reunited. In the company of Polish men who were on the run from Nazis, Rubin was captured near the border of Italy and Switzerland two weeks into the trip. Rubin’s father wished to avoid that same fate for his third son, and in March, at not yet 15 years old, Rubin left his home in Hungary to attempt to reach Switzerland and safety. Emery and his friend were captured at a train station and sent to a forced labor camp, then to the Mauthausen concentration camp. By early 1944, Rubin’s older brother Miklós had been conscripted for forced labor, and his brother Emery (originally spelled Imre) had left with a friend to avoid similar conscription. His father, Ferenc, was a veteran of World War I, and his mother, Rosa, was Ferenc’s third wife. Born to Jewish parents in Hungary in 1929, Rubin was one of six children-three sons and three daughters. Tibor Rubin was not awarded the Medal for action in World War II, but for action during the Korean War, nor was Rubin a WWII veteran. This Medal of Honor story is a little different. Photo by Army News Service, retrieved from the Department of Defense. Tibor Rubin in US Army combat uniform, circa 1949.
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