Fifteen-year-old Tibor Rubin watched as American soldiers entered Mauthausen concentration camp on 5 May 1945. The stench of death and disease greeted the 11th Armored Division’s liberators, a smell that the Hungarian-Jewish teenager knew all too well after surviving 14 hellish months imprisoned in the camp. The boy’s father – a veteran of World War I and former POW in Russia – had died in Buchenwald. Meanwhile, his stepmother and one sister had been sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. He and his other siblings were orphans, alone in a strange world but alive, nonetheless. Standing in awe of medics providing comfort and care, Rubin found himself overcome with gratitude. It was in that moment that he vowed to repay the debt by one day joining the US Army, serving alongside those who had saved his life and returned to him his freedom.
Three years later, in 1948, Rubin arrived in New York City to make good
