Worth Reading - What America Should Be About
Raised by a Navy man and a patriot then immersing myself in Colonial and Revolutionary History, it is easy for me to recognize the following as a standard for what America is all about.
Soldier who saved POWs to receive medal
By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY Thu Sep 22, 6:55 AM ET
Tibor Rubin was 14 when his family was rounded up by the Germans during World War II. His mother and a little sister were killed in Auschwitz, his father in Buchenwald.
Rubin survived Mauthausen, and when Americans liberated the camp in May 1945, he took a vow.
"It was like angels coming," he said. "That's why I promised, 'If I go to the United States one day, I'm going to join the Army and try to pay back that beautiful country.'"
Rubin followed through. He joined the Army, fought in Korea and spent 30 months as a prisoner of war.
Friday, President Bush will award Rubin, whom he has called 'one of the greatest Jewish soldiers America has ever known,' the Medal of Honor.
Rubin is credited with saving as many as 40 American lives in POW camps run by North Korean and Chinese captors, U.S. Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins said. At the camps, he nursed the sick and raised morale, she said.
He also stole food for his fellow soldiers, hopping fences and crawling on his belly for handfuls of barley and bunches of turnips.
"What else could I do?" asked Rubin, now 76 and living in Garden Grove, Calif. "They (American soldiers) were weak and dead and dying. I was taking care of them like a mother."
It has taken more than five decades for Rubin's heroics to be recognized by his adopted country, partly because one of his superiors didn't want the Medal of Honor - the nation's highest award for valor - awarded to a Jew, Robbins said.
"He answered the call of duty in gratitude to the nation that rescued him," Robbins said. But "within his company, the first sergeant was not amenable to a Jewish soldier receiving the Medal of Honor."
For your consideration:
- Story from Yahoo! News
- Picture from Yahoo! News
- "Meet Tibor Ruben" from the Mudville Gazette
- Official page from the US Army
- Jewish Heroes in America
- Listen to the NPR story by Michele Norris
- Another take from USA TODAY
