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Sep 233 min read

This Day in History: Tibor Rubin's bravery in Korea

On this day in 2005, a hero receives the Medal of Honor. Tibor “Ted” Rubin had survived imprisonment, both during World War II and the Korean War. “How did I make it?” he mused. “The Lord only knows. . . . there were so many times I was supposed to die over there, you know, and I’m still here. It’s a miracle.”

 

The Hungarian-born Rubin was just 13 years old when he was seized and taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp during World War II. “Every day so many people were killed,” he remembered. “Bodies piled up God knows how high. We had nothing to look forward to but dying.”

 

He didn’t die, though. Instead, he was among those liberated by the U.S. Army in May 1945. “The American Soldiers had great compassion for us,” he said. “Even though we were filthy, we stunk and had diseases, they picked us up and brought us back to life.”

 

He vowed, then and there, that he would go to America and join the U.S. Army. “I have a debt to pay, so I made a promise,” he shrugged.

 

Amazingly, he did just that.


By the summer of 1950, he was serving in Korea. Unfortunately, he found himself under the command of an anti-Semitic sergeant who kept sending him on impossible missions.

 

One time, he was sent to singlehandedly guard a hill.

 

“I went [to] every foxhole,” he explained, “and put a bunch of hand grenades. . . . I had to somehow trick them that more than one man guarding it.”

 

When the attack came, Rubin said, “I was so scared, I went bananas. I was screaming, and I threw hand grenades, pulled the pin, BOOM! Pulled the pin, BOOM! Then I shoot with my rifle, the M1. Then I shoot my carbine, then I threw it all over.”

 

For 24 hours, he guarded that hill alone, taking out a staggering number of the enemy troops. Ultimately, he stopped the enemy advance.

 

On another occasion, Rubin singlehandedly went back for a wounded soldier, Cpl. Leonard Hamm, who had been left behind. His sergeant thought Hamm was probably dead, but Rubin thought someone should confirm. “All I could think about was that somebody back home was waiting for him to return,” he said.

 

As it turned out, Hamm was barely clinging to life. Rubin crawled through sniper fire and saved him.

 

Nevertheless, Rubin is perhaps best known for the 30 months that he spent as a prisoner of war in Korea. His captors had offered to send him home to Hungary, but he refused. He’d already survived a concentration camp, learning survival skills along the way. He wanted to stay and help his fellow soldiers.

 

Rubin ministered to the sick. He gave pep talks and worked to keep others from losing hope. On one occasion, he spent the whole night picking lice off a soldier. He repeatedly snuck out at night and stole food from nearby gardens or storehouses.

 

“The Chinese would’ve cut Ted’s throat if they’d caught him stealing. It still amazes me that they never did catch him,” Sgt. Leo Cormier marveled.

 

Rubin is credited with saving 40 soldiers.

 

“He saved a lot of GI’s lives,” Cormier confirmed. “He gave them the courage to go on living when a lot of guys didn’t make it. He saved my life when I could have laid in a ditch and died—I was nothing but flesh and bones.”

 

Rubin returned to the States after his release, but he wasn’t awarded the Medal of Honor right away. Unfortunately, the anti-Semitic sergeant had “forgotten” to send nomination paperwork in multiple times. Years later, some of the men who’d been in captivity with him figured out what had happened.

 

They worked hard to set the record straight, and Rubin finally received a Medal in 2005.

 

“[The United States is] the best country in the world, and I’m part of it now,”  Rubin smiled.


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