After 55-year wait,
Jewish veteran to receive Medal of Honor

Tibor Rubin kept his promise to join the U.S. Army after American troops late in World War II freed him from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

A Hungarian Jew, Rubin immigrated to New York after the war, joined the Army and fought as an infantryman on the frontlines in the Korean War. In 1951, Chinese troops captured Cpl. Rubin and other U.S. soldiers and he became a prisoner of war for 2½ years.

Drawing from his experience at the Nazi concentration camp, Rubin daily risked his own life by stealing food from his captors and provided hope and crude medical care that kept more than 40 U.S. soldiers alive.

After a relentless campaign by grateful comrades and a group of Jewish war veterans, President Bush on Sept. 23 will bestow the Medal of Honor on Rubin.

“I was only staying alive to get that medal and now I’m going to enjoy it,” said the 76-year-old Rubin, who now lives in Garden Grove.

He was nominated four times for the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest recognition for bravery in battle, but it is believed that the paperwork was never submitted because a member of his chain of command discriminated against him for being Jewish and born in Hungary.

Rubin, who is called “Ted” by friends, said he was raised by a religious mother who instilled in him the importance of doing good deeds.

When he was at the Chinese prisoners’ camp known as “Death Valley,” Rubin said he would pray in Hebrew for the U.S. soldiers – about 40 each day – who died in the winter. He also took care of soldiers suffering from dysentery or pneumonia in the freezing weather.

Rubin called concentration camp a good “basic training” for being a POW and applied lifesaving lessons he learned there.

For example, Rubin said he would retrieve maggots from the prisoners’ latrine and apply them to the infected wounds of his comrades to remove gangrene.

“When they came to the flesh, the red meat, I would take them off,” Rubin said. “This was their antibiotic.”

Fellow POW Sgt. Leo Cormier said Rubin gave a lot of GIs the courage to live by his words and actions.

“I once saw him spend the whole night picking lice off a guy who didn’t have the strength to lift his head,” Cormier told the Army. “What man would do that? … But Ted did things for his fellow men that made him a hero in my book.”

He also showed bravery in the battlefield.

In October 1950, Rubin defended a hill by himself manning a machine gun in which three other soldiers had already died while firing. He also later tossed grenades down foxholes on advancing North Koreans, allowing other soldiers to flee.

As a POW, Rubin turned down repeated offers from the Chinese to be returned to his native Hungary.

“I told them I couldn’t go back because I was in the U.S. Army and I wouldn’t leave my American brothers because they needed me here,” Rubin said.

Rubin, who has been married for 42 years to his wife, Yvonne, ranked coming to the United States as his greatest achievement in life.

Rubin said his medal belongs to all the prisoners of war who died and other soldiers.

“It belongs to all the soldiers in all of our armed forces who died for their country and all the people in Iraq and Afghanistan and all who are in harm’s way,” Rubin said. “It’s for all of us.”

Rubin wouldn’t say anything negative about the Army and his long wait for the Medal of Honor.

In affidavits filed in support of Rubin’s nomination, fellow soldiers said their sergeant was allegedly a vicious anti-Semite who gave Rubin dangerous assignments in hopes of getting him killed.

Others, however, took up the cause on behalf of Rubin.

In 1988, the Jewish War Veterans of the United States took up Rubin’s cause and urged Congress to recognize his efforts and the prejudice against him.

In a related move, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Florida, introduced the “Leonard Kravitz Jewish War Veterans Act of 2001” to force the Pentagon to review the records of Jewish veterans who may have been denied the Medal of Honor because they were Jews.

The bill was named after Pfc. Kravitz, 21, who during the Korean War manned a machine gun to cover retreating U.S. troops. His body was found slumped over the machine gun with several dead enemy soldiers lying nearby. Kravitz posthumously received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest honor.

The records of about 150 Jews who received the Distinguished Service Cross remain under review, said Bob Zweiman, past national commander of the Jewish War Veterans.