A Washington D.C.-area philanthropist who survived the Holocaust and gave millions of dollars to Holocaust-related causes — $1 million of it to the Holocaust Center of Northern California — died at his home in Potomac, Md., on July 28. Dr. Laszlo Nandor Tauber was 87.
Born in Hungary in 1915, Tauber was 29 when he was made chief of surgery at the International Red Cross Hospital in Budapest. The hospital continued to serve Jews under extraordinarily difficult conditions after the Nazis occupied Hungary.
Tauber was never deported himself, most likely because his hospital was affiliated with the Red Cross. He was able to care for many Jews in the hospital, as well as provide some with forged papers that delayed their deportation.
Tauber came to the United States in 1947, opened a private practice and taught at George Washington University. He also began dabbling in real estate. Starting with small buildings, he then moved to constructing office buildings, which he then leased to the federal government. His estimated worth reached $1 billion, and he became one of the government’s largest private landlords.
In 1965, he founded his own hospital, Jefferson Memorial in Alexandria, Va., where he was medical director and chairman of the surgery department.
Tauber’s gift to the Holocaust Center in 1999 was part of a $25 million charitable remainder trust he set up for Holocaust-related institutions, meaning the money would go to them after his death. They included the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry at Brandeis University. He also gave millions for scholarships and to other universities, including two in Israel.
He earmarked money for African-Americans, believing that because Jews had been discriminated against, they had a special responsibility to battle discrimination.
The trust was set up in memory of Tauber’s parents, uncle and brother, and in honor of his wife and three children at the time.
“Ninety percent of my family was killed either in concentration camps or forced labor camps,” he told the Jewish Bulletin in 1999. “The Holocaust never left me. I was liberated physically, but not from my memories.”
“My father has clearly made a statement about the importance of the preservation of Holocaust history and memory,” said Ingrid D. Tauber, also in 1999. Ingrid Tauber, of San Francisco, served as the co-president of the Holocaust Center.
Upon learning that a Christian Hungarian general who had saved Jewish children from the Nazis was living in Budapest in poverty, Tauber supported him for the last decade of his life.
Tauber also donated generously to San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El.
Tauber kept an extremely low profile. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, he was awarded the Red Cross’s highest medal of honor, the Medal of Merit. His children had to coerce him into accepting it.
“I don’t think he views himself at all as a hero,” said Ingrid Tauber in 1999. “I think he was doing what he thought was the right and moral thing to do.”
Tauber’s first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter, Tauber is survived by his wife, Diane; a son, Alfred I. Tauber of Boston; a stepdaughter, Rachael Tauber of San Francisco; and four grandchildren.