Tivadar Soros (; born Theodor Schwartz; 7 April 1893 – 22 February 1968) was a Hungarian lawyer, author and editor. He is best known for being the father of billionaire

George Soros George Soros (born György Schwartz; August 12, 1930) is an American investor and philanthropist. , he has a net worth of US$7.2 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundat ...

, and engineer Paul Soros. 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. 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.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. He studied law at the Franz Joseph University in Kolozsvár (now

Cluj-Napoca Cluj-Napoca ( ; ), or simply Cluj ( , ), is a city in northwestern Romania. It is the second-most populous city in the country and the seat of Cluj County. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (), Budapest () and Belgrade ( ...

), in what was then Hungarian Transylvania. Soros fought in

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

and spent years in a prison camp in

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

before escaping. He founded the

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

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 Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

. Soros was said to like the new name because it is a

palindrome A palindrome (Help:IPA/English, /ˈpæl.ɪn.droʊm/) is a word, palindromic number, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date "Twosday, 02/02/2020" and th ...

and because of its meaning; in Hungarian, '' soros'' means "next"; in

it means "will soar". Soros forged paperwork, giving the family's new alias, as the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944. The family fled to safe houses for nearly a year, until Soviet forces invaded the country. Soros died of cancer in New York in 1968.

Publications

* ''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 Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

occupation of Budapest. It has been translated into English (''Maskerado: Dancing Around Death'' London: Canongate, 2000), French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Czech, Russian, German and Turkish.

Notes and references

External links

Review of ''Modern Robinsons''
* (broken link) * ''Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Soros, Tivadar 1893 births 1968 deaths 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century Hungarian lawyers American magazine founders Austro-Hungarian military personnel of World War I Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in World War I Franz Joseph University alumni Hungarian editors Hungarian Esperantists Hungarian Jews Hungarian writers Jewish Esperantists Lawyers from New York City Hungarian magazine founders Tivadar Writers of Esperanto literature World War I prisoners of war held by Russia