Tivadar Soros
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 | .svg.png.webp){kind=small} 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 Erzebet 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), 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. He wrote the short novel Modernaj Robinzonoj (Modern Robinsons) (1923), republished in 1999 by Bero (an Esperanto publisher) afterwards translated into several languages and Maskerado ĉirkaŭ la morto (Masquerade (dance) around death), published 1965, an autobiographical novel about his experience during the Nazi occupation of Budapest, Hungary. Maskerado has been translated into English, French, Hungarian,[5] Italian, Polish, Czech, Russian, German and Turkish.
He died by cancer in New York in 1968.
References
- 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.
- 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.
- Tivadar Soros (2002). Álarcban (in Hungarian). Translated by István Ertl. Budapest: Trezor. ISBN 963-9088-73-0.