Tibor Rubin, a Korean War hero who survived a Chinese prisoner of war camp and the Mauthausen concentration camp, died this week at age 86.
Rubin, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism, died of natural causes on Dec. 5 in Garden Grove.
Born in Paszto, a Hungarian shtetl of 120 Jewish families, Rubin spent two years in Mauthausen as a young teen. He was 15 when the camp was liberated by U.S. troops. In 1948 he immigrated to the United States, and lived for a while in Oakland. He felt he owed something to his adopted country and joined the Army.
Deployed during the Korean War in 1950, Rubin singlehandedly defended a hill for 24 hours against waves of North Korean soldiers to cover the retreat of his company. He spent 2½ years in a POW camp where he used skills he acquired during the Holocaust to steal food from Chinese supply depots and distribute it among his fellow prisoners; they later credited him with keeping 40 people alive.
Rubin was recommended three times for the Congressional Medal of Honor, but the necessary paperwork was intentionally sabotaged by the company’s anti-Semitic first sergeant, as detailed in a July 6, 2015 story in J. (www.tinyurl.com/jweekly-tibor-rubin).
Rubin finally won the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2005. “I want this recognition for my Jewish brothers and sisters,” he said upon receiving the medal. “I want the goyim to know that there were Jews over there, that there was a little greenhorn from Hungary who fought for their beloved country.” — jta & j. staff