Medal of Honor Monday: Tibor Rubin – From Hungary to Hell

A Prisoner Once More Rubin was taken to a North Korean prisoner of war camp where starvation, disease, and brutality were routine. Guards beat prisoners, denied medical care, and allowed illness to spread unchecked. For Rubin, the setting was hauntingly familiar. He had seen this system before. Rather than withdraw inward, Rubin went to work. Despite being beaten when caught, he routinely stole food from his North Korean captors and distributed it to fellow prisoners. He tended the sick, carried the dying, and risked execution daily to keep others alive. Fellow prisoners later testified that dozens survived because of Rubin’s actions. He never sought recognition. He simply refused to watch men die when he could intervene. Anti-Semitism and Silence Rubin’s heroism during combat and captivity went unrecognized for decades. Fellow soldiers later stated that some officers harbored open anti-Semitic attitudes and failed to submit award recommendations. In some cases, documentation simply vanished. Rubin returned home in 1953, physically broken but alive, carrying the weight of another survival story that no one seemed interested in hearing. By then, the nation had tired of war. He went back to civilian life, working quietly, building a family, and talking little about Korea. The Medal of Honor Decades later, surviving members of Rubin’s unit pushed for recognition. Investigations confirmed what prisoners and soldiers had long said. Rubin’s actions in Korea met the highest standard of valor. In 2005, more than fifty years after the war, President George W. Bush awarded Tibor Rubin the Medal of Honor. The citation recognized both his battlefield bravery and his extraordinary courage as a prisoner of war. Rubin stood in the White House as a man who had survived the Holocaust, two wars, and decades of silence. Finnegan’s War and Public Recognition Rubin’s story reached a wider audience through the 2019 documentary Finnegan’s War, which highlighted his service and the institutional failures that delayed his recognition. The film portrayed Rubin not as a mythic figure, but as a stubborn, ordinary man who refused to surrender his humanity under inhuman conditions. Later Life, Death, and Legacy Tibor Rubin lived a long and rewarding life after receiving the Medal of Honor. He remained active in veteran communities and Holocaust remembrance efforts until his death in 2022 at the age of 92. His legacy boldly cuts across borders, wars, and identities. Rubin was a Holocaust survivor who became an American soldier. He was a prisoner who refused to become a victim. His story is not one of revenge or ideology. It is about duty, gratitude, and moral stubbornness in the face of cruelty. Tibor Rubin did not fight for recognition. He fought because it was the right thing to do. That alone is reason enough to remember his name. He was the only Holocaust survivor to be awarded the Medal of Honor.