President
Bush presented the Medal of Honor to Cpl. Tibor Rubin at a White House
ceremony today in recognition of his courageous conduct in Korea from 1950
to 1953. Ambassador Simonyi was one of the first to
congratulate him after the ceremony. "We are very proud of Tibor
Rubin," said the Ambassador.
Rubin,
72, the son of a shoemaker and one of six children, was born in Pásztó,
a Hungarian settlement of a hundred and twenty Jewish families. At age 13,
he was deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp was and liberated two
years later by American troops. Both his parents and two of his sisters
perished in the Holocaust.
He
came to the United States in 1948, settled in New York, and a year and a
half later enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight inthe Republic of Korea with
Company I, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division.
In
October 1950, Chinese troops crossed the border into North Korea and
attacked American troops. In the ensuing battle, Rubin was severely
wounded and was captured. For the next two and a half years, Rubin risked
his life daily to keep his fellow soldiers alive and hopeful in two of the
worst prisoner-of-war camps. According to witnesses, his personal actions
to obtain food and to provide medical care directly resulted in the
survival of more than forty troops.
Ambassador
Simonyi with Tibor Rubin and Rabbi
Levi Shemtov Director, Washington Office, American Friends of Lubavitch
