August 7, 2024 • 26 mins
Tibor Rubin’s story continues. As a young man, Tibor joined the U.S. Army, and he was sent to fight during the Korean War, where he was captured and taken to a brutal prisoner of war camp. On multiple occasions, he saved many lives and acted with bravery to protect U.S. troops. His story is about more than courage and bravery. It’s about compassion. And the truth that, sometimes, hope is the most powerful defense we have.
Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the Buffalo Jewish Federation and the book "Single Handed: The Inspiring True Story of Tibor "Teddy" Rubin, Holocaust Survivor, Korean War Hero, and Medal of Honor Recipient".
The appearance of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I'm Malcolm Glawell and this is Medal of Honor.
Stories of Courage our podcast about the heroes who have
won America's highest military decoration. In the last episode, we
met Tyber Rubin, or Ted as he renamed himself. Born
(00:37):
in Hungary, he survived a Nazi concentration camp when he
was just a teen. He was liberated by American gis
and made a vow that someday, God willing, he would
become one of them, and he did. He joined the
US Army and was sent to Korea. When we last
saw him there, he had held off an entire enemy
(00:58):
force by himself at night. He survived, but he was
horrified by what he had done. He hadn't gone to
the army to kill people, he wanted to say of them.
But on the day after Ted's one man stand, his
commanding officer surveyed the scene. He knew that Ted's battle
was more than just a bloodbath. He hadn't only safeguarded
(01:21):
a valuable cache of weapons. He had kept the enemy
from reaching the main and only road, the one that
led directly to the US troops. Yes, he had taken lives,
but he had saved countless more.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I kept down town. I say, hey, Hevvy, if you
don't kill them, you're gonna get killed. Not only you
get killed, your friend said. Everybody said, that's what it shall.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
The CEO thought he deserved the Medal of Honor, but
one thing stood in the way. Ted's supervisory officer, Sergeant A,
the bigoted man who'd put him in that hopeless position
on the ridge in the first place. So even though
the CEO ordered Sergeant A to write up the paperwork
to recommend Ted for the Medal of Honor, Sergeant A
(02:10):
never did. He wasn't going to see a Jewish soldier
get that kind of recognition, Not on my watch, he said.
And Ted kept getting sent into the worst imaginable situations.
Sergeant A made sure of that.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Every time he needed a volunteer, so called valanteer, they
always called for me. Say get me that fucking sort
of a bitch having got a jew That was me,
So perishon. I forget my real name. I figured in
the corn I said, I'm a bitch ruck it's me.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
No.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I was only twenty year old.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
It became clear to everyone that Sergeant A wouldn't be
happy until he had gotten Ted killed.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
He actually made a hero out.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Of me, because every dangerous mission Ted got sent on
just showcased his bravery, his resourcefulness, and his compassion. Even
more than that, Ted never lost his optimism, his hope,
his belief in the goodness of others. He risked his
life to rescue a fellow soldier, Leonard Ham, from the
(03:13):
battlefield against Sergeant A's orders. Re saved him. Then Sergeant
A sent Ted into the forest alone on a deadly
scouting mission. He zigzagged from tree to tree, trying to
stay hidden, but suddenly right in front of him were
three armed North Korean soldiers. Once again Ted was outnumbered,
(03:35):
but then he noticed something. They were holding a white flag.
One of them, a lieutenant, asked Ted who he was.
Ted's mind raised. If they knew he was a private,
a soldier of minimal importance, they might kill him, so
he lied. He said he was a commanding officer, a major,
and he didn't stop there. He told them that North
(03:55):
Korea had lost the war. Kim Olsung was in Tokyo
right that very moment, in peace stocks with General MacArthur,
and that's how he got two full companies of enemy soldiers,
several hundred men to surrender to him.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
It was a miracle. You know what I meant. I
was stocking broken anguish. There was stocking broken English. I
was a sharp looking soldiers. I told them our Major
Rubin and they gave up. They captured over four hundred
prisoner with horter firing anything.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
The North Korean soldiers lay down their arms and Ted
told them to wait where they were until they could
bring reinforcements. He ran back to camp with the news.
Once again, nobody believed him until they went out and
saw the hundreds of unarmed surrendered North Korean soldiers, and
(04:52):
once again Sergeant A was told to fill up the
paperwork for a medal of honor, and because of Bigot
is nothing if not predictable, he did no such thing.
Then came the worst battle Ted's units saw. Unbeknownst to
the American troops on the ground, the Chinese had entered
the war, sending thousands of soldiers to join the North Koreans.
(05:14):
Three US Army battalions, including Ted's, were sent to the
small city of Unsand, where the attacks were constant and merciless.
Ted was there behind a line defended by a single
machine gun way out in the open. One machine gunner
after another was killed while operating it. Three men died,
(05:37):
and then nobody wanted to go out and hold the
line anymore.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Nobody wanted to get on and because it was dangerous.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
But it was necessary to save their lives. So Ted
stepped forward.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
And I'm not because I'm a hero or anything, but
I figured that's the only thing we have left, so
that's slow them down.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Ted held the position until the ammunition was gone. He
took shrapnel to his hand, his chest, his leg, but
he wouldn't leave his position. Meanwhile, Sergeant A had retreated
behind the lines, telling no one and taking no one
with him. He'd run away to safety. The good news
for Ted was that his tormentor was finally gone. More
(06:23):
reason for optimism, right, But in fact Ted's run of
luck was about to end. The Americans were massively outnumbered.
First came defeat, then came capture. Ted and a straggling
group of survivors were rounded up by the Chinese command
(06:43):
and marched north. Initially there were a handful of soldiers
in the line with Ted. Soon they were hundreds. It
was November nineteen fifty, the start of a particularly brutal winter.
Ted took breaks from marching to remove his boots and
massage his toes. He had seen toes turn black and
(07:06):
fall off from frostbite at Mathhausen. The lessons from the
camp were coming back to him. The men walked for
days through knee deep snow. Finally they saw it, a
dozen single story shacks with a creek running past them,
surrounded by loops of barbed wire. They had arrived at
the place they would soon call death Valley.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Why they collected dead welly because the guys started dying dead.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Ted couldn't have known, but he was heading into a
system of notoriously brutal pow camps. Of the American servicemen
who went into these camps, thirty eight percent would die.
If the American soldiers thought they had seen death and
cruelty in combat, they hadn't seen anything like what was coming.
(07:56):
But Ted had more on that after this quick break.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
When you become captured, you become a nothing that can't
take you out. Any second they shoot you, and that's it.
You're just the dead man that can beat you up.
I guess start of you that can finish you. And
you know more a Yoman bin.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Life in pow Camp five was like this. You got
two tiny cups of grain twice a day, and when
it was cooked in water please note clean water not available,
it turned into a porridge that kept a soldier hovering
just above the starvation point. There was no hospital for
all the wounded and sick. Well. There was something they
(08:52):
called the hospital, but if you went in, you didn't
come out. Soldiers knew to avoid it at all costs.
The three thousand prisoners had dysentery, pneumonia, untreated wounds, and
they had the dreaded and give up itis, what they
called it when an inmate would just stop eating, stop moving,
(09:12):
and seemingly lose the will to live. Winter was viciously cold,
and the prisoners were dressed in rags that didn't keep
out the chill. They stood in the snow shivering while
the captors did roll call. Everyone was starving. They would
sleep squeeze next to each other like sardines. Often they'd
(09:34):
wake up next to someone who had died in the night.
For the American soldiers, this was an unimaginable nightmare. For Ted,
it was all too familiar. Remember, he had been in
a Nazi concentration camp just five years earlier. But there
were key differences between Camp five and Mathausen. For one thing,
(09:56):
they looked very different. At Mothhausen, the prison fortress had
been designed to last. Camp five was just a series
of hastily built mud huts. And Ted would tell you
there was another key difference too. For the Nazis, mass
murder was the whole point. But while the Chinese didn't
necessarily care if a soldier died, death wasn't the ultimate
(10:19):
goal indoctrination was. This was the Cold War communism versus democracy.
The Chinese desperately wanted these Americans to buy into their
way of life, even if it happened by force. Perhaps
you've heard of the movie The Manchurian Candidate. It's a
classic nineteen sixties film starring Frank Sinatra. The whole plot
(10:41):
revolves around an American Gi, who is brainwashed in a
North Korean pow camp. That Gi wins the Medal of Honor,
and then because he's been brainwashed, he tries to kill
the Conservative Party's presidential nominee. The film is a psychological
thriller with a hefty dose of political satire and surrealism,
(11:02):
and camp.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
His brain has not only been washed as they say,
it has been dry clean.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
The gii's mother is in on the assassination plot. She's
played by Angela Lansbury, who was at the time thirty seven.
The actor playing her son was thirty five. It's all
completely nuts anyway. This is all to say brainwashing, or
the attempt at brainwashing, was an actual thing in the camps.
In Camp five, the soldiers days were filled with information
(11:35):
sessions lectures about the ills of American society. They could
be tortured if they resisted their re education or engaged
in debate with their captors. Agreeing with the doctrine, on
the other hand, might get them cigarettes or food layered
on top of the painful hunger, the cold, and the deprivation.
The idea was to break the soldiers down and rebuild
(11:58):
them as compliant comrades. But Ted had a way to
avoid all of this misery. His Chinese captors realized, Hey,
here's a guy who can't really speak English. Sorry, Ted,
He's not even an American citizen. He's from Hungry, which
is under the influence of the USSR, which is our
(12:18):
communist ally. So they came to Ted and said comrade,
you don't have to stay here. We'll send you home
to hungry. The other soldiers were blown away by Ted's
incredible good luck, and they were equally blown away when
Ted said no, he would stay with his men, thank
you very much. The other guys couldn't believe it. Why
(12:41):
would anyone stay in this god forsaken place? But they
didn't realize something essential about Ted. He hadn't become a
soldier to gun down hundreds of men on a ridge
to take life. He'd become a soldier to give life.
And he realized that he could do that in the camp,
not just keep people alive, but keep them human.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I would help anybody. If I am Abro and my
mother was a SEMBI I'll show my friend there was
a semi. And that's one thing she teach us that
I through help your fellow men, the regardless the black yellow,
but they were a nationality.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Ted had already endured the Holocaust. This would be a
central fact of his life, as it was for all
who survived it. But almost none of those fellow survivors
had to live it again. Ted did, and then he
chose to stay there and put what he had learned
to work. He started mapping the camp. When the guards
(13:45):
took the prisoners up the mountainto chop wood, Ted stared
back at the prison buildings, scanning them. This is where
the storehouses are, This is where the guards sleep. When
they needed prisoners to bury dead bodies, and they were
always dead bodies. Ted's hands shot up, I'll go. He
took every opportunity to get the lay of the land.
(14:06):
The moment he figured out where they were keeping the food,
he started stealing it. Every night, he snuck into the
storehouses and stuffed the legs of his uniform with bits
of bread and meat or potatoes, whatever he could find.
Then he brought his loot back and shared it with
everyone he could. The men were grateful, but they were
(14:27):
terrified on his behalf. They all understood that if Ted
were caught, he would be killed. The men in his
camp called him brave. Ted thinks it was something else.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
They have to be notch and I all of this
was match, you know, rather than Jewish Michigan.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
I love that word with Sugarno. Leo Cormier was one
of the men in Ted's hut. Years later, he remembered
what Ted did.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Theysed have grinding mills for flowering, stuffed his pants pull
of flower to chank for all the guys in camp
they eat. Yeah, he rested his wife in it, but
I'm stealing out flower, cut the neck off, and uh
we didn't take grass and well regular grass and make
soup out of it.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
And I shouldn't help a lot of guys or make
sure they got their food rounding.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Just like he learned back in Mathausen, Ted convinced his
bunk mates to strip down and pick every single louse
and bed bug off their bodies. He knew what would
happen if they let the vermin take over.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
I seen them one night spend the whole night checking
lice off one of the guys that then had the
stunt to look to head up. And Ted's stayed there
all night picking lice off the guy on that charcoal fire.
So yeah, what now would do that a.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Man like Ted?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I was not just a soldier, not just a funny
looking jew. I was there of and they need me,
I feed them. I was dead handy man doctor nurse friend.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Ted desperately tried to keep POW's out of the so
called hospital where the weakest were sent to die. So
he'd find sick men and watch them carefully. He brought
them hot water in his helmet and washed their wounds.
When they were too weak to get up and were
lying in their own filth, he cleaned them. He did
that for Leo.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
He got so bad.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
I had dysentery and I couldn't go to the bathroom.
Ted would kick me up. I don't want to hell.
He got the shrink to carry me, but I don't
really waiting about paid homes daily natty pounds on it.
He cary me down to the river or wash me.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
So why did Ted do it? Maybe because he remembered
the feeling of holding his brother's hand in the concentration
camp and how that fleeting moment of connection restored his
sense of humanity. Maybe because after all of those enemy
soldiers he killed on the ridge, he wanted to even
the tally make up for the lives he'd taken. But
(16:57):
I think it's even bigger than that. It's because Ted
Rubins saw the possibility of greatness in every single man
he saved.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
They all be saved, and you save alife, you save
maybe a nation.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
When you save a life, you save a nation. Ted
didn't see men who were skin and bones, crusted in filth,
beaten down. He saw future fathers, community leaders, people who
had the potential to do good in the world. He
saw the American life he had always dreamed about, even
when the worst America had to offer spat in his face.
(17:31):
So he put his own life on the line to
safeguard that dream for everyone else.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
Oh my life to him, and you know I would
have just perished in that clearing camp and the mid
of Ted. Okay, I'm not sugar a lot quite a
few other guys whom frown without Ted and gave them
the courage to go on living.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Which brings us back to Johnny. You remember him from
the last episode. He was a dying soldier on the
floor of the mud hut, the young serviceman with give
up itis, too sick to move or eat or keep going.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
You don't want to eat. He was just giving off.
I see, Johnny, I say a red Cross us. Yes, there,
you bring us new medication. I will gave chamoum, but
only one thing I ask you, And that's all you
have to promise. Johnny, You've gonna help you shall because
(18:26):
your parent's waiting for you. Your brother is she stare
waiting for you. What's gonna be, Johnnie? You wanna die
or you wanna help? You shed?
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Johnny promised to help himself, and Ted kept giving him
that medicine. He visited Johnnie three times a day for
a week, carrying those little brown pills. After five days,
Johnny was sitting up and talking again. Two weeks later,
he was on his feet thanks to the amazing medicine
that Ted had given him. But here's the thing. There
(18:58):
was no medicine in the camp. The Red Cross hadn't
been there. Those little brown balls were And I think
this is beautiful. So I'm sorry for what I'm about
to say. Goat poop. Ted fed him goat shehit. He
knew that what Johnny really needed was something to believe in.
What the hell? It worked?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
So when he was completely recovered, event you sat on
my bet. You make meat all the shit. But thank
god I'm alive. He kiss me and everything. You are
so happy.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Ted's special medicine didn't save Johnny's life. Hope did. Finally,
after thirty months in Camp five, the men started to
go home.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Red officers come forward to deliver another consignment of you
and prisoners to the custody of Allied officials, a total
of six hundred and eighty four.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
From then on, red.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Ambulances disgorged the stark proof of man's inhumanity to man.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
The conflict was slowly reaching its end.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Even as these fortunate ones turn their steps homeward, thousands
of others remained to an unknown fate. But for those
who can smile again, all America is thankful.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
They sent the sick home first, and by then Ted
was one of them. That old shrapnel wound in his
knee had become infected. He arrived in the US on
a stretcher. Thousands of men had died in Camp five,
but Ted had managed to save at least thirty of them.
He had kept them alive, and he had kept Hope
(20:29):
alive too. When Ted got back to the States, he
(20:49):
became an American citizen. He reconnected with his siblings, who
had finally gotten permission to immigrate to the US and
who had been waiting for him. And in the final
strange twist to his story, he became famous. His picture
made the papers. Remember what I said about how handsome
he was. Hollywood saw that too. He was invited to
(21:10):
Premier's in publicity events, Starlet's on his arm. There was
talk of turning his life story into a movie, but
Ted was uninterested. He didn't want to talk about his
experiences in Modhausen or in Korea. Like so many survivors
of his generation, he preferred to put it behind him
focus on his American life. He got married, he had kids,
(21:34):
He settled down in California. He worked at his brother
Emory's liquor store, And even though he had been told
on two separate occasions on the battlefield that he had
been recommended for the Medal of Honor, he had never
thought about the fact that no medal had ever materialized.
In fact, he had been recommended four times, four practically
(21:56):
unheard of. Good Old Sergeant A had refused to file
the paperwork for two of those recommendations, and two others
from the battle at a Sane and from his heroism
at Camp five, had gotten lost in a shuffle. But
the men who remembered, including Leo Cormier, spent years advocating
(22:16):
on his behalf. They knew what he deserved. Then in
the nineteen nineties, the military started looking back through the records.
They wanted to see if any Jewish serviceman had been
overlooked because of anti Semitism. Right at the top of
the list was Ted. In September of two thousand and five,
(22:37):
he finally got his medal awarded by President George W.
Speaker 6 (22:41):
Bush, and by awarding the Medal of Honor to Corporal
Reuben Today, the United States acknowledges the debt that time
has not diminished. By repeatedly risking his own life to
say brothers corporate, Ruben exemplified the highest ideals of military
service and fulfilled a pledge to give something back to
the country that had given him his freedom. And he
(23:04):
knew that the America he thought for did not always
live up to his highest ideals. Yet he had enough
trust in America's promise to see his commitment through.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Ted still didn't think he deserved a medal. Ted just
did the thing he thought human beings were supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I said, listen, yesterday, I was just a schmock. Today
they called mesaur and to get a medal of all,
you know, that's a big thing. I never know that
I gonna be a superchu. I'm joking. No, I'm not
(23:41):
superd I'm just a regular guy.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Between his actions in combat and at the camp. The
Army puts the number of people that ted Reubin saved
that close to one hundred. I think he was able
to do that because he valued the humanity in every
person he met, even those who treated him with bigotry
or scorn, even those who saw him as a funny
(24:05):
foreigner with a crazy accent and of religion, they didn't understand.
He was taught the value of life when he was
only fourteen, in a place that didn't value life at all.
He learned the power of hope and compassion that he
kept those lessons with him. They gave him strength, and
with that strength he gave strength to others. Ted Rubin
(24:28):
died in twenty fifteen at the age of eighty six.
Proud of his service and proud most of all to
be a citizen of the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
It is the best count in the world, and I'm
part of it now.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is written by Meredith
Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Constanza Gallardo, and Izzy Carter.
The show was edited by Ben daph Haffrey, Round design
and additional music by Jake Gorski. Recording engineering, by Nita Lawrence,
fact checking by Arthur Gombert's original music by Eric Phillips.
(25:20):
Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and
the book Single Handed by Daniel Cohen. If you want
to learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow
us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and
videos of the heroes featured on this show. We'd also
love to hear from you dm us with a story
about a courageous veteran in your life. If you don't
(25:42):
know a veteran, we would love to hear a story
of how courage was contagious in your own life. You
can find us at Pushkinbods. I'm your host, Malcolm Grappler
Pushkin. I'm Malcolm Glawell and this is Medal of Honor.
Stories of Courage our podcast about the heroes who have
won America's highest military decoration. In the last episode, we
met Tyber Rubin, or Ted as he renamed himself. Born
(00:37):
in Hungary, he survived a Nazi concentration camp when he
was just a teen. He was liberated by American gis
and made a vow that someday, God willing, he would
become one of them, and he did. He joined the
US Army and was sent to Korea. When we last
saw him there, he had held off an entire enemy
(00:58):
force by himself at night. He survived, but he was
horrified by what he had done. He hadn't gone to
the army to kill people, he wanted to say of them.
But on the day after Ted's one man stand, his
commanding officer surveyed the scene. He knew that Ted's battle
was more than just a bloodbath. He hadn't only safeguarded
(01:21):
a valuable cache of weapons. He had kept the enemy
from reaching the main and only road, the one that
led directly to the US troops. Yes, he had taken lives,
but he had saved countless more.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I kept down town. I say, hey, Hevvy, if you
don't kill them, you're gonna get killed. Not only you
get killed, your friend said. Everybody said, that's what it shall.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
The CEO thought he deserved the Medal of Honor, but
one thing stood in the way. Ted's supervisory officer, Sergeant A,
the bigoted man who'd put him in that hopeless position
on the ridge in the first place. So even though
the CEO ordered Sergeant A to write up the paperwork
to recommend Ted for the Medal of Honor, Sergeant A
(02:10):
never did. He wasn't going to see a Jewish soldier
get that kind of recognition, Not on my watch, he said.
And Ted kept getting sent into the worst imaginable situations.
Sergeant A made sure of that.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Every time he needed a volunteer, so called valanteer, they
always called for me. Say get me that fucking sort
of a bitch having got a jew That was me,
So perishon. I forget my real name. I figured in
the corn I said, I'm a bitch ruck it's me.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
No.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I was only twenty year old.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
It became clear to everyone that Sergeant A wouldn't be
happy until he had gotten Ted killed.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
He actually made a hero out.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Of me, because every dangerous mission Ted got sent on
just showcased his bravery, his resourcefulness, and his compassion. Even
more than that, Ted never lost his optimism, his hope,
his belief in the goodness of others. He risked his
life to rescue a fellow soldier, Leonard Ham, from the
(03:13):
battlefield against Sergeant A's orders. Re saved him. Then Sergeant
A sent Ted into the forest alone on a deadly
scouting mission. He zigzagged from tree to tree, trying to
stay hidden, but suddenly right in front of him were
three armed North Korean soldiers. Once again Ted was outnumbered,
(03:35):
but then he noticed something. They were holding a white flag.
One of them, a lieutenant, asked Ted who he was.
Ted's mind raised. If they knew he was a private,
a soldier of minimal importance, they might kill him, so
he lied. He said he was a commanding officer, a major,
and he didn't stop there. He told them that North
(03:55):
Korea had lost the war. Kim Olsung was in Tokyo
right that very moment, in peace stocks with General MacArthur,
and that's how he got two full companies of enemy soldiers,
several hundred men to surrender to him.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
It was a miracle. You know what I meant. I
was stocking broken anguish. There was stocking broken English. I
was a sharp looking soldiers. I told them our Major
Rubin and they gave up. They captured over four hundred
prisoner with horter firing anything.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
The North Korean soldiers lay down their arms and Ted
told them to wait where they were until they could
bring reinforcements. He ran back to camp with the news.
Once again, nobody believed him until they went out and
saw the hundreds of unarmed surrendered North Korean soldiers, and
(04:52):
once again Sergeant A was told to fill up the
paperwork for a medal of honor, and because of Bigot
is nothing if not predictable, he did no such thing.
Then came the worst battle Ted's units saw. Unbeknownst to
the American troops on the ground, the Chinese had entered
the war, sending thousands of soldiers to join the North Koreans.
(05:14):
Three US Army battalions, including Ted's, were sent to the
small city of Unsand, where the attacks were constant and merciless.
Ted was there behind a line defended by a single
machine gun way out in the open. One machine gunner
after another was killed while operating it. Three men died,
(05:37):
and then nobody wanted to go out and hold the
line anymore.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Nobody wanted to get on and because it was dangerous.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
But it was necessary to save their lives. So Ted
stepped forward.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
And I'm not because I'm a hero or anything, but
I figured that's the only thing we have left, so
that's slow them down.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Ted held the position until the ammunition was gone. He
took shrapnel to his hand, his chest, his leg, but
he wouldn't leave his position. Meanwhile, Sergeant A had retreated
behind the lines, telling no one and taking no one
with him. He'd run away to safety. The good news
for Ted was that his tormentor was finally gone. More
(06:23):
reason for optimism, right, But in fact Ted's run of
luck was about to end. The Americans were massively outnumbered.
First came defeat, then came capture. Ted and a straggling
group of survivors were rounded up by the Chinese command
(06:43):
and marched north. Initially there were a handful of soldiers
in the line with Ted. Soon they were hundreds. It
was November nineteen fifty, the start of a particularly brutal winter.
Ted took breaks from marching to remove his boots and
massage his toes. He had seen toes turn black and
(07:06):
fall off from frostbite at Mathhausen. The lessons from the
camp were coming back to him. The men walked for
days through knee deep snow. Finally they saw it, a
dozen single story shacks with a creek running past them,
surrounded by loops of barbed wire. They had arrived at
the place they would soon call death Valley.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Why they collected dead welly because the guys started dying dead.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Ted couldn't have known, but he was heading into a
system of notoriously brutal pow camps. Of the American servicemen
who went into these camps, thirty eight percent would die.
If the American soldiers thought they had seen death and
cruelty in combat, they hadn't seen anything like what was coming.
(07:56):
But Ted had more on that after this quick break.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
When you become captured, you become a nothing that can't
take you out. Any second they shoot you, and that's it.
You're just the dead man that can beat you up.
I guess start of you that can finish you. And
you know more a Yoman bin.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Life in pow Camp five was like this. You got
two tiny cups of grain twice a day, and when
it was cooked in water please note clean water not available,
it turned into a porridge that kept a soldier hovering
just above the starvation point. There was no hospital for
all the wounded and sick. Well. There was something they
(08:52):
called the hospital, but if you went in, you didn't
come out. Soldiers knew to avoid it at all costs.
The three thousand prisoners had dysentery, pneumonia, untreated wounds, and
they had the dreaded and give up itis, what they
called it when an inmate would just stop eating, stop moving,
(09:12):
and seemingly lose the will to live. Winter was viciously cold,
and the prisoners were dressed in rags that didn't keep
out the chill. They stood in the snow shivering while
the captors did roll call. Everyone was starving. They would
sleep squeeze next to each other like sardines. Often they'd
(09:34):
wake up next to someone who had died in the night.
For the American soldiers, this was an unimaginable nightmare. For Ted,
it was all too familiar. Remember, he had been in
a Nazi concentration camp just five years earlier. But there
were key differences between Camp five and Mathausen. For one thing,
(09:56):
they looked very different. At Mothhausen, the prison fortress had
been designed to last. Camp five was just a series
of hastily built mud huts. And Ted would tell you
there was another key difference too. For the Nazis, mass
murder was the whole point. But while the Chinese didn't
necessarily care if a soldier died, death wasn't the ultimate
(10:19):
goal indoctrination was. This was the Cold War communism versus democracy.
The Chinese desperately wanted these Americans to buy into their
way of life, even if it happened by force. Perhaps
you've heard of the movie The Manchurian Candidate. It's a
classic nineteen sixties film starring Frank Sinatra. The whole plot
(10:41):
revolves around an American Gi, who is brainwashed in a
North Korean pow camp. That Gi wins the Medal of Honor,
and then because he's been brainwashed, he tries to kill
the Conservative Party's presidential nominee. The film is a psychological
thriller with a hefty dose of political satire and surrealism,
(11:02):
and camp.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
His brain has not only been washed as they say,
it has been dry clean.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
The gii's mother is in on the assassination plot. She's
played by Angela Lansbury, who was at the time thirty seven.
The actor playing her son was thirty five. It's all
completely nuts anyway. This is all to say brainwashing, or
the attempt at brainwashing, was an actual thing in the camps.
In Camp five, the soldiers days were filled with information
(11:35):
sessions lectures about the ills of American society. They could
be tortured if they resisted their re education or engaged
in debate with their captors. Agreeing with the doctrine, on
the other hand, might get them cigarettes or food layered
on top of the painful hunger, the cold, and the deprivation.
The idea was to break the soldiers down and rebuild
(11:58):
them as compliant comrades. But Ted had a way to
avoid all of this misery. His Chinese captors realized, Hey,
here's a guy who can't really speak English. Sorry, Ted,
He's not even an American citizen. He's from Hungry, which
is under the influence of the USSR, which is our
(12:18):
communist ally. So they came to Ted and said comrade,
you don't have to stay here. We'll send you home
to hungry. The other soldiers were blown away by Ted's
incredible good luck, and they were equally blown away when
Ted said no, he would stay with his men, thank
you very much. The other guys couldn't believe it. Why
(12:41):
would anyone stay in this god forsaken place? But they
didn't realize something essential about Ted. He hadn't become a
soldier to gun down hundreds of men on a ridge
to take life. He'd become a soldier to give life.
And he realized that he could do that in the camp,
not just keep people alive, but keep them human.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
I would help anybody. If I am Abro and my
mother was a SEMBI I'll show my friend there was
a semi. And that's one thing she teach us that
I through help your fellow men, the regardless the black yellow,
but they were a nationality.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Ted had already endured the Holocaust. This would be a
central fact of his life, as it was for all
who survived it. But almost none of those fellow survivors
had to live it again. Ted did, and then he
chose to stay there and put what he had learned
to work. He started mapping the camp. When the guards
(13:45):
took the prisoners up the mountainto chop wood, Ted stared
back at the prison buildings, scanning them. This is where
the storehouses are, This is where the guards sleep. When
they needed prisoners to bury dead bodies, and they were
always dead bodies. Ted's hands shot up, I'll go. He
took every opportunity to get the lay of the land.
(14:06):
The moment he figured out where they were keeping the food,
he started stealing it. Every night, he snuck into the
storehouses and stuffed the legs of his uniform with bits
of bread and meat or potatoes, whatever he could find.
Then he brought his loot back and shared it with
everyone he could. The men were grateful, but they were
(14:27):
terrified on his behalf. They all understood that if Ted
were caught, he would be killed. The men in his
camp called him brave. Ted thinks it was something else.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
They have to be notch and I all of this
was match, you know, rather than Jewish Michigan.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
I love that word with Sugarno. Leo Cormier was one
of the men in Ted's hut. Years later, he remembered
what Ted did.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Theysed have grinding mills for flowering, stuffed his pants pull
of flower to chank for all the guys in camp
they eat. Yeah, he rested his wife in it, but
I'm stealing out flower, cut the neck off, and uh
we didn't take grass and well regular grass and make
soup out of it.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
And I shouldn't help a lot of guys or make
sure they got their food rounding.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Just like he learned back in Mathausen, Ted convinced his
bunk mates to strip down and pick every single louse
and bed bug off their bodies. He knew what would
happen if they let the vermin take over.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
I seen them one night spend the whole night checking
lice off one of the guys that then had the
stunt to look to head up. And Ted's stayed there
all night picking lice off the guy on that charcoal fire.
So yeah, what now would do that a.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Man like Ted?
Speaker 2 (15:45):
I was not just a soldier, not just a funny
looking jew. I was there of and they need me,
I feed them. I was dead handy man doctor nurse friend.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Ted desperately tried to keep POW's out of the so
called hospital where the weakest were sent to die. So
he'd find sick men and watch them carefully. He brought
them hot water in his helmet and washed their wounds.
When they were too weak to get up and were
lying in their own filth, he cleaned them. He did
that for Leo.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
He got so bad.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
I had dysentery and I couldn't go to the bathroom.
Ted would kick me up. I don't want to hell.
He got the shrink to carry me, but I don't
really waiting about paid homes daily natty pounds on it.
He cary me down to the river or wash me.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
So why did Ted do it? Maybe because he remembered
the feeling of holding his brother's hand in the concentration
camp and how that fleeting moment of connection restored his
sense of humanity. Maybe because after all of those enemy
soldiers he killed on the ridge, he wanted to even
the tally make up for the lives he'd taken. But
(16:57):
I think it's even bigger than that. It's because Ted
Rubins saw the possibility of greatness in every single man
he saved.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
They all be saved, and you save alife, you save
maybe a nation.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
When you save a life, you save a nation. Ted
didn't see men who were skin and bones, crusted in filth,
beaten down. He saw future fathers, community leaders, people who
had the potential to do good in the world. He
saw the American life he had always dreamed about, even
when the worst America had to offer spat in his face.
(17:31):
So he put his own life on the line to
safeguard that dream for everyone else.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
Oh my life to him, and you know I would
have just perished in that clearing camp and the mid
of Ted. Okay, I'm not sugar a lot quite a
few other guys whom frown without Ted and gave them
the courage to go on living.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Which brings us back to Johnny. You remember him from
the last episode. He was a dying soldier on the
floor of the mud hut, the young serviceman with give
up itis, too sick to move or eat or keep going.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
You don't want to eat. He was just giving off.
I see, Johnny, I say a red Cross us. Yes, there,
you bring us new medication. I will gave chamoum, but
only one thing I ask you, And that's all you
have to promise. Johnny, You've gonna help you shall because
(18:26):
your parent's waiting for you. Your brother is she stare
waiting for you. What's gonna be, Johnnie? You wanna die
or you wanna help? You shed?
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Johnny promised to help himself, and Ted kept giving him
that medicine. He visited Johnnie three times a day for
a week, carrying those little brown pills. After five days,
Johnny was sitting up and talking again. Two weeks later,
he was on his feet thanks to the amazing medicine
that Ted had given him. But here's the thing. There
(18:58):
was no medicine in the camp. The Red Cross hadn't
been there. Those little brown balls were And I think
this is beautiful. So I'm sorry for what I'm about
to say. Goat poop. Ted fed him goat shehit. He
knew that what Johnny really needed was something to believe in.
What the hell? It worked?
Speaker 2 (19:17):
So when he was completely recovered, event you sat on
my bet. You make meat all the shit. But thank
god I'm alive. He kiss me and everything. You are
so happy.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Ted's special medicine didn't save Johnny's life. Hope did. Finally,
after thirty months in Camp five, the men started to
go home.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Red officers come forward to deliver another consignment of you
and prisoners to the custody of Allied officials, a total
of six hundred and eighty four.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
From then on, red.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Ambulances disgorged the stark proof of man's inhumanity to man.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
The conflict was slowly reaching its end.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Even as these fortunate ones turn their steps homeward, thousands
of others remained to an unknown fate. But for those
who can smile again, all America is thankful.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
They sent the sick home first, and by then Ted
was one of them. That old shrapnel wound in his
knee had become infected. He arrived in the US on
a stretcher. Thousands of men had died in Camp five,
but Ted had managed to save at least thirty of them.
He had kept them alive, and he had kept Hope
(20:29):
alive too. When Ted got back to the States, he
(20:49):
became an American citizen. He reconnected with his siblings, who
had finally gotten permission to immigrate to the US and
who had been waiting for him. And in the final
strange twist to his story, he became famous. His picture
made the papers. Remember what I said about how handsome
he was. Hollywood saw that too. He was invited to
(21:10):
Premier's in publicity events, Starlet's on his arm. There was
talk of turning his life story into a movie, but
Ted was uninterested. He didn't want to talk about his
experiences in Modhausen or in Korea. Like so many survivors
of his generation, he preferred to put it behind him
focus on his American life. He got married, he had kids,
(21:34):
He settled down in California. He worked at his brother
Emory's liquor store, And even though he had been told
on two separate occasions on the battlefield that he had
been recommended for the Medal of Honor, he had never
thought about the fact that no medal had ever materialized.
In fact, he had been recommended four times, four practically
(21:56):
unheard of. Good Old Sergeant A had refused to file
the paperwork for two of those recommendations, and two others
from the battle at a Sane and from his heroism
at Camp five, had gotten lost in a shuffle. But
the men who remembered, including Leo Cormier, spent years advocating
(22:16):
on his behalf. They knew what he deserved. Then in
the nineteen nineties, the military started looking back through the records.
They wanted to see if any Jewish serviceman had been
overlooked because of anti Semitism. Right at the top of
the list was Ted. In September of two thousand and five,
(22:37):
he finally got his medal awarded by President George W.
Speaker 6 (22:41):
Bush, and by awarding the Medal of Honor to Corporal
Reuben Today, the United States acknowledges the debt that time
has not diminished. By repeatedly risking his own life to
say brothers corporate, Ruben exemplified the highest ideals of military
service and fulfilled a pledge to give something back to
the country that had given him his freedom. And he
(23:04):
knew that the America he thought for did not always
live up to his highest ideals. Yet he had enough
trust in America's promise to see his commitment through.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Ted still didn't think he deserved a medal. Ted just
did the thing he thought human beings were supposed to do.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
I said, listen, yesterday, I was just a schmock. Today
they called mesaur and to get a medal of all,
you know, that's a big thing. I never know that
I gonna be a superchu. I'm joking. No, I'm not
(23:41):
superd I'm just a regular guy.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Between his actions in combat and at the camp. The
Army puts the number of people that ted Reubin saved
that close to one hundred. I think he was able
to do that because he valued the humanity in every
person he met, even those who treated him with bigotry
or scorn, even those who saw him as a funny
(24:05):
foreigner with a crazy accent and of religion, they didn't understand.
He was taught the value of life when he was
only fourteen, in a place that didn't value life at all.
He learned the power of hope and compassion that he
kept those lessons with him. They gave him strength, and
with that strength he gave strength to others. Ted Rubin
(24:28):
died in twenty fifteen at the age of eighty six.
Proud of his service and proud most of all to
be a citizen of the United States of America.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
It is the best count in the world, and I'm
part of it now.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is written by Meredith
Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Constanza Gallardo, and Izzy Carter.
The show was edited by Ben daph Haffrey, Round design
and additional music by Jake Gorski. Recording engineering, by Nita Lawrence,
fact checking by Arthur Gombert's original music by Eric Phillips.
(25:20):
Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and
the book Single Handed by Daniel Cohen. If you want
to learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow
us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and
videos of the heroes featured on this show. We'd also
love to hear from you dm us with a story
about a courageous veteran in your life. If you don't
(25:42):
know a veteran, we would love to hear a story
of how courage was contagious in your own life. You
can find us at Pushkinbods. I'm your host, Malcolm Grappler
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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