Tivadar Soros[1] (Esperanto: Teodoro Ŝvarc; born Theodor Schwartz; 7 April 1893 – 22 February 1968) was a Hungarian lawyer, author and editor.[2][3] He is best known for being the father of billionaire George Soros, and engineer Paul Soros.
Tivadar Soros | |
|---|---|
 Soros c. 1930s | |
| Native name | Soros Tivadar (after 1936) |
| Birth name | Theodor Schwartz |
| Born | 7 April 1893 Nyírbakta, Transleithania, Austria-Hungary (modern-day Hungary) |
| Died | 22 February 1968 (aged 74) New York, United States |
| Allegiance |  Austria-Hungary |
| Service | Austro-Hungarian Army |
| Years of service | 1914–1918 |
| Known for | Esperanto magazine editor, lawyer |
| Battles / wars | World War I |
| Alma mater | Franz Joseph University, Kolozsvár (now Cluj) |
| Spouse(s) |
Erzsébet Szücs (m. 1924) |
| Children | |
He was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Nyírbakta, Hungary, near the border with Ukraine. His father had a general store and sold farm equipment. When Tivadar was eight, his father moved the family to Nyiregyhaza, the regional center in north-eastern Hungary, providing a somewhat less isolated life experience.[4]
He first met his wife Erzsébet when she was eleven years old during a visit to the home of her father Mor Szücs, a cousin of his own father.[4]
He studied law at the Franz Joseph University in Kolozsvár (now Cluj-Napoca), in what was then Hungarian Transylvania.[4]
Soros fought in World War I and spent years in a prison camp in Siberia before escaping. He founded the Esperanto literary magazine Literatura Mondo (Literary World) in 1922, having learned the language from a fellow soldier during the war, and edited it until 1924.
In 1936, Soros changed the family's surname from the German-Jewish "Schwartz" to "Soros", in an attempt to protect the family from Hungary's increasing antisemitism.[5][6] Soros was said to like the new name because it is a palindrome and because of its meaning; in Hungarian, soros means "next"; in Esperanto it means "will soar".[7][8][9]
Soros forged paperwork, giving the family's new alias, as the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944.[10] The family fled to safe houses for nearly a year, until Soviet forces invaded the country.[11]
Soros died of cancer in New York in 1968.
Publications
edit- Modernaj Robinzonoj ("Modern Robinsons") (1923), a short account of his escape from a Russian prison camp, which was republished in 1999 by Esperanto publisher Bero and was translated into several languages, including English (Crusoes in Siberia, Mondial, 2010) .
- Maskerado ĉirkaŭ la morto ("Masquerade around death") (1965), an autobiographical novel about Soros's experience during the Nazi occupation of Budapest. It has been translated into English (Maskerado: Dancing Around Death London: Canongate, 2000), French, Hungarian,[12] Italian, Polish, Czech, Russian, German and Turkish.
Notes and references
edit- ^ The family changed its name in 1936 from Schwartz to Soros, in response to growing antisemitism with the rise of Fascism.
- ^ Soros, Tivadar (2001). Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-occupied Hungary. New York: Arcade Publishing.
- ^ Soros, Tivadar (2011). Masquerade: the incredible true story of how George Soros' father outsmarted the Gestapo. New York: Arcade Pub. ISBN 978-1-61145-024-8.
- ^ a b c Description of Tividar's early life in Kaufman, Michael T., (2002) Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, First Vintage Books Edition, Published by Random House, New York City, Tividar and Erzebet, Chapter 1, pgs. 3–14.
- ^ Soros, Tivadar; Tonkin, Humphrey (2001). Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-occupied Hungary. Arcade Publishing. pp. 220, Afterword by Humphrey Tonkin. ISBN 9781559705813. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
- ^ Zepetnek, Steven Tötösy de (2009). Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies. Purdue University Press. p. 9. ISBN 9781557535269. Archived from the original on 27 January 2017. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
- ^ Kaufman, Michael T. (2002). Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire. Knopf. p. 24. ISBN 9780375405853. Archived from the original on 27 January 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2016.
- ^ Bessner, Daniel (6 July 2018). "The George Soros philosophy – and its fatal flaw". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 6 July 2018. Retrieved 7 July 2018.
- ^ Soros, George (13 July 2018). "George Soros: I'm a passionate critic of market fundamentalism – Response to Bessner". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 July 2018. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
- ^ Hershey Jr., Robert D. (15 June 2013). "Paul Soros, Shipping Innovator, Dies at 87". New York Times. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
- ^ "Paul Soros, Innovator in Shipping Design, Dies". Wall Street Journal. Associated Press. 15 June 2013. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
- ^ Soros, Tivadar (2002). Álarcban (in Hungarian). Translated by István Ertl. Budapest: Trezor. ISBN 963-9088-73-0.