A young Jewish Hungarian man survivors the Holocaust, immigrates to the United States, faces antisemitism, fights in the Korean War and weathers a POW camp to become an American hero

Now that Should Be A Movie

It is called Single Handed

It is a Prison Camp Drama

In the vein of Unbroken.

It is like Son of Saul meets Hacksaw Ridge.

It follows courageous Holocaust survivor Tibor Rubin

And compassionate World War II veteran Randall Briere

As they fight North Korean and Chinese Communists and American antisemites.

Problems arise when Tibor and Randall are captured by the communists and Tibor is denied his medals by a bigoted officer.

Now together Tibor’s death camp experience and Randall’s determination will help them survive a POW camp and get Tibor his Medal of Honor.

The idea came to me when I watched interviews when Tibor and saw how humble and down-to-earth, he was and realized he was a unique American with a unique story that should be told.

My unique approach would be a movie in five acts. Tibor the Holocaust Survivor. Tibor the Immigrant. Tibor the Soldier. Tibor the Prisoner of War. Tibor the American Hero.

A set piece would be when North Korean guards call the American prisoners out of their huts and line them up, execution style. Some prisoners cry out for mercy. Others wet themselves. Some fall on their hands and knees. Tibor pulls them back up. He tells the group to pray and begins chanting in Hebrew. His fellow POWs join him. The guards raise their weapons to the firing position. Then the Chinese officers show up and stop the North Koreans just in time.

Target audiences would be men and women (20 to 80), Jewish people, South Koreans, Hungarians, history buffs, military veterans, and teachers.

Audiences would want to watch Tibor’s story due to the themes of bravery, determination, excitement of battle, the suspense of surviving in a POW camp, courage in the face of adversity and antisemitism, and the human-interest story of the only Holocaust survivor to receive the Medal of Honor.

Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie is Single Handed: The Inspiring True Story of Tibor “Teddy” Rubin–Holocaust Survivor, Korean War Hero, and Medal of Honor Recipient by Daniel M. Cohen, from Dutton Caliber

Tibor Rubin the Holocaust Survivor

Tibor was born and reared in Pásztó, Hungary. His first encounter with death was when his Jewish Orthodox father required him to sit up with a dead body overnight. His favorite pastime was going to the theater to watch American movies like Laurel and Hardy, Tarzan, and Frankenstein. He was enthralled with America, its large cities, wide-open land, abundant opportunities, and promise of freedom.

Hungary during World War II was on the side of the Nazis. When Tibor’s parents see Jewish people being robbed of their radios and restricted from different jobs, they decide to send him with a group of seven refugees heading for Switzerland. Two weeks after he left, the Jewish community in Pásztó was removed, joining the 430,000 Hungarian Jews sent to concentration camps.  Tibor’s group was almost to the border of Switzerland when they were captured. Tibor was fourteen years old.

The group was sent to Mauthausen. During his stay in the camp, Tibor learned many things that would later help him survive in Korea. For example, he always thought lice were harmless. But after seeing that prisoners infected by lice-carried diseases never returned from the hospital, he learned how to squeeze the eggs out of his clothing before they hatched and attacked his body. When he was having stomach problems, a prisoner brought him charcoal from the stove and told him to chew and swallow. His stomach ailments went away.

He learned to steal. The prison guards and staff were treated to meals of fresh vegetables, meat, and cheese. None of it was given to the prisoners who were subsisting on gruel. The food that was not eaten was dumped into large oil drums. Once a week the contents of the drums were set on fire. Until then the food rotted. The other prisoners made a small box and placed it in a wood pile not far from the drums. They then put Tibor into the box. Tibor curled up in the box all day, trying not to sneeze or cough. After night fell, he would watch the guards, who stayed away from the drums because of the smell. When all seemed clear he would then make his way to the drums. He tightened the cuffs of his shirtsleeves and filled them full of food. The next day the other prisoners would come get him. Tibor began to see himself as a rat: quick, silent, limber, constantly vigilant, and kept to a set path.

Tibor’s faith began to waver. He imagined the Nazis as the Egyptians whipping the Hebrew slaves. He understood why injustice would happen to God’s people. But why was God allowing the Greek, Russian, Spanish, and other gentile prisoners to suffer? Did not they deserve equal grace?

Deliverance came when General George S. Patton’s 11^th Armored Division liberated Mauthausen on May 5, 1945. Tibor was sent to a refugee camp. There was a female lieutenant taking care of him who he thought must be an American. He had to know, so one day he reached out and grabbed her boot and asked if she was American. Years later he would remember the name of Bernadine Plasters from South Dakota. She would remember him as well.

Tibor was reunited with his brothers and a sister. His parents, a sister, and nearly all of his aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends had perished. When he returned to Pásztó, he did not receive the same welcome his father had when he returned from a Siberian POW camp at the end of World War I. The Soviets were now occupying the country, installing a puppet government. Then a Russian soldier tried to rape his sister and the Soviet officers were dismissive of the family’s complaints. Tibor’s older brother declared they were done with Hungary.

Tibor Rubin The Immigrant

Tibor spent two years in a Displaced Persons camp until an uncle who had immigrated to the US before the war secured passage for him. As the ship pulled into the New York Harbor, he dumped his clothing in the bay. “It only took one look for him to realize he could never wear clothes made of old army blankets among the forest of skyscrapers that rose up in the distance: the people would think he was a fool. Gleefully he watched the shoddily made shirts and pants flutter in the breeze, slap the waves, and disappear in the ship’s wake” (p. 89). But it was not only old clothes he was letting go. “He was casting off every trace of the old world, along with the prohibitions, laws, and traditions that had been forced upon him in his childhood. As he finally set his eyes on America, he promised himself that nothing from his father’s world would hold him back (p. 89, 90).”

But making it in America was not as easy as it appeared in the movies. He had a hard time finding a job. And despite no longer practicing Judaism, he experienced antisemitism on both jobs and romantic dates. Yet his love for America did not wane. He watched in awe as the American Airforce broke the Soviet Union’s strangle on West Berlin with the Berlin Airlift, an event which should also be a movie. “To him and countless other arrivals from Middle Europe, the United States became more than a refuge from the D[isplaced] P[ersons] camps; it was the champion of freedom and the enemy of the despots in Russia.” (p. 95) Tibor decided to join the army.

The first time Tibor tried to join he did not tell the recruiter he could not read English. When given a test to take, he randomly marked answers and flunked. He was told to come back and take the test in six months. He returned in six months after learning to read English. He flunked again, with an even lower score. Meanwhile, the Cold War tensions between the US and Soviet Russia grew more heated. In 1949 the Soviets tested their first nuclear bomb. But Tibor was not worried. He figured the US could pulverize the Soviets in a fight.

Tibor tried enlisting again. He was told that if the sergeant overseeing the recruits taking the test saw something he did not like about him, then Tibor would have to wait another six months. While taking the test Tibor would look over to see how the other recruits were answering and copied them. After the test, he was told the sergeant wanted to see him. He had passed the test with the highest score. He was off to advanced infantry training in Okinawa.

Tibor Rubin The Soldier

On Okinawa, he was assigned to I Company, 8th Cavalry Regiment, First Cavalry Division. Even in the army, he faced antisemitism. Many of the other soldiers were country and Southern boys who had never met a Jewish man before. More sinister antisemitism came from his master sergeant, Arthur Peyton, a foul mouthed World War II veteran from Texas. The other soldiers told Rubin to stay away from him.

Then North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. When Item Company received words to move out, Tibor was told to report to the company commander. The captain told him that since he was not born in the United States and was not even a citizen, he did not have to go. “Sir,” Tibor said. “I wear U. S. uniform because I’m part of this group. And also, because I owe United States that liberated me.” The captain said there would be a lot of killing in Korea and offered to reassign Tibor to an office job in Tokyo or Germany. Tibor insisted on staying with the men with whom he had trained. A few days later he received orders to deploy to Korea.

When the First Cavalry landed at P’ohang-dong, South Korea, the numerically superior North Korean Communists were waiting for them just twenty-five miles away on the Pusan Perimeter. It was under battlefield conditions that MS Peyton’s antisemitism came out. He could not believe that Tibor was a Jew. “No son-of-a-b*&@#ing Jew would be dumb enough to join this Army to fight this war. All the real Jews are back home making big bucks.” When he found out that Tibor had volunteered, he added “stupid” to the list of other derogatory epithets with which he would address him.

Whenever there was a dangerous or dirty job, MS Peyton would call for Tibor. He sent him on scouting missions, to patrol forward lines, check the rear and civilians for infiltrators, and guard the company vehicles. He also sent Harold Speakman with him, thinking that his last name was Jewish. Speakman was Catholic and of English and Welsh extraction.

The battles along the Pusan Perimeter intensified. The First Cav Division lost five thousand men over ten days of combat. Three company commanders of Item were killed in quick succession. All were 1950 graduates of West Point. The company was deployed at Chirye Hill when it began falling back in the face of three crack North Korean divisions. “Find me the Hungarian,” Peyton ordered. He sent Tibor to hold the hill to cover the retreat. He then left him alone in the dark.

Tibor found a supply of grenades and filled each foxhole with a bundle. Then he asked for God’s protection and cursed him for leaving one of His chosen people alone on the hilltop. Then the North Koreans attacked in human waves, their bells and whistles filling the air. All night Tibor ran from one foxhole to the next, throwing grenades into the dark. He picked up a carbine and fired at whatever sound the enemy made. He prayed to Jesus, Moses, God, Muhammad, Buddha, whoever would listen and get him out of the mess. He did this until Corsairs, like God’s appointed servants, came flying down from the morning sky and drove the communists away with their heavy fire. When the morning light came, Tibor found himself nauseated at the pile of dead men at his feet.

After he was relieved, Tibor told the master sergeant he wanted to see the Company Commander. He does not want to see you, Peyton said. Rubin insisted on seeing the CO. Peyton eventually took Tibor to see the CO, to whom he apologized, claiming Tibor was suffering from shellshock. When the CO went to the hill and saw all the dead, he told the master sergeant that he would be putting Rubin in for the Medal of Honor. This would be the first of four times Tibor would be recommended for the Medal of Honor.

Many of the soldiers begin siding with Tibor against the sergeant. Randall Briere asked MS Peyton about the paperwork for Tibor’s MOH. Not on my watch, the master sergeant replied. A few days later the CO who recommended Tibor for the Medal was killed in combat.

Heavy fighting continued as the Americans and North Koreans attacked and counterattacked. Casualties mounted in Item Company, which lost eighteen men killed or wounded in one day. During one counterattack Tibor was knocked unconscious by a shell. When he came to, Father Emil Kapaun, who also deserves a movie, was praying over him, administrating last rites. Tibor let him finish. Tibor was medevaced to a field hospital. There he was told he could be sent to Japan for treatment or maybe even the States. However, Tibor talked them into letting him stay.

When he returned to his company, Peyton still sent him on dangerous tasks despite him officially being on “light duty.” More soldiers began siding with Tibor against MS Peyton. Briere and another soldier named Leonard Hamm approached him about the Medal of Honor recommendations and the dangerous jobs he was giving Tibor. “Do you want to take his place?” the master sergeant replied. The men were silent.

The First Cav and other units under the command of General Walton Walker, a Churchillian character who also deserves a movie, held the Pusan Perimeter until the landing at Inchon behind the North Koreans forced them to retreat. Five thousand Americans were dead and sixteen thousand wounded, with an additional two thousand, five hundred missing in action or captured. As Tibor and his comrades marched up the Korean Peninsula, they were greeted with the sight of American POWs who had been executed, their hands bound behind their backs.

As Item approached a village, MS Peyton sent Tibor to investigate. He returned to report that the village was empty except for suspicious-looking bamboo that appeared transplanted. He suspected an ambush. Peyton ordered Leonard Hamm to gather twelve men and check out the village. “And take that f—ing jew with you.”

As the patrol neared the village, T-34 tanks opened fire on the men. Before American airpower was able to destroy the tanks, six men had been killed and two wounded. Leonard was missing. Tibor believed he was alive. The master sergeant said that he was dead, but Tibor was allowed to get his “ass shot up” looking for him.

Tibor moved on his belly toward the huts. Snipers fired at him. He prayed to God to help him. He found Leonard unconscious and dragged him back to safety. As Leonard recovered in the hospital he couldn’t stop thinking about that crazy Hungarian.

On October 3rd the US Army crossed the 38^th parallel into North Korea. MS Peyton was told to watch out for Communist infiltrators mingling with refugees heading south. But the sergeant was more concerned with snipers. He once again “voluntold” Tibor to scout. “You’ve already been recommended for the Medal of Honor. I would like to see if you really measure up.” 

Tibor spent the night in the woods. Suddenly three North Korean soldiers appeared in front of him. Then ten, twenty, thirty, until the woods were full of them. Tibor wondered what kind of joke God was playing on him. Then an officer approached him and asked him his rank. “Major,” Tibor replied. He further lied to the sergeant, saying that there was a tank division behind him and that the North Korean leaders were holding peace talks in Tokyo. Tibor told the lieutenant to order his soldiers to drop all their weapons. After the lieutenant gave him his pistol, Tibor marched him and two other soldiers back to the master sergeant.

Back at company HQ Peyton said he was too busy to talk.  “I have just captured eight hundred to a thousand North Koreans,” Tibor informed him. Peyton thought he was just bucking for another Medal of Honor. After Tibor introduced the North Korean lieutenant, the master sergeant got the CO and they headed into the woods and to their astonishment found a scene straight out of Sergeant York, hundreds of enemy soldiers milling around. The CO recommended Tibor for the Medal of Honor. Even MS Peyton was proud of him, but he still refused to do the paperwork for the MOH.

Then the Chinese entered the war. The official word from General Douglas MacArthur was that the Chinese were not a threat. Tibor, Leonard, and Randall Briere found out otherwise when a Chinese soldier fell through the roof of a dugout and landed in the middle of their card game.

In late October the Chinese set fire to the woods surrounding Item Company’s position at Unsan. On November 1^st, 20,000 Chinese attacked, surrounding the Americans on three sides. A machinegun crew held off the attackers until all the men manning the gun were killed. Those who tried to reach the machine gun to replace the crew were cut down.

Then Tibor rushed through the heavy enemy fire and made it to the machinegun nest. He hammered down on the gun, turning right and left, opening gaps in the Chinese’ lines. He kept telling himself to drop the gun and run but bullets kept coming out of the barrel. One of the men he was covering was Father Kapaun, who was dragging the wounded to safety. A can of coolant burst, knocking Tibor out of commission. During a lull in the fighting, Tibor was told he would be recommended for a Silver Starr, but Peyton had disappeared.

The Chinese attacked in mass the next day. Helicopters that tried to evacuate the wounded were forced to turn around due to heavy incoming enemy fire. During lulls in the fighting, Americans crawled out of their lines to gather up the weapons of the fallen Chinese. Again, Tibor manned a machine gun, covering his comrades as they retreated. The gun began to stutter and fail. A massive jolt knocked Tibor backward, ripping the gun from his hands.

When survivors of the battle made it to American lines and counted their losses, there were over a thousand casualties. Tibor was officially Missing In Action.

Tibor Rubin The Prisoner of War

The death march of American, UN, and civilian POWs by the Communists through the freezing mountains of North Korea was just as brutal as the infamous Bataan Death March. Despite these conditions, Tibor and Father Kapaun tried to help the other soldiers, keeping them from falling back which would mean death at the hands of the guards. There were just too many of them. Despite struggling with leg and chest wounds, Tibor showed the other POWs how to fight off frostbite. He took off his boots and rubbed his toes to warm them. As Tibor helped the other soldiers, he began to wonder for what reason God had spared him at Unsan and Mauthausen. During the march, he came across a shed full of grain. He tightened the bottom of his pants and used them as bags to carry the food back to the other soldiers in the line, just like he had done in Mauthausen.

Tibor and Father Kapaun did not stop helping their fellow inmates after reaching the POW camp the prisoners nicknamed Death Valley. For years afterward, soldiers would remember the strange talking soldier who brought them lifesaving food, melted snow for them to drink, and helped clean up the sick. He slipped out every night looking for something more nutritious than the cracked cornmeal the POWs were fed. He found soybeans and pancakes. One time he was almost caught when grain fell out of his pants’ leg and left a trail.

Diarrhea and pneumonia ran rampant through the overcrowded huts. Gangrene set in on the wounded. Tibor made his way into a pile of dead Americans, stripped their clothing, washed the clothing in fresh water, and applied a “tangle of squirming parasites to the gangrenous part of [the wounds] and let them eat” (p. 200). Even after Father Kapaun died, Tibor did not relent in helping his fellow inmates. Leonard Hamm realized they were only alive due to the suicidal bravery of the “little Hungarian Jew.”

Tibor would sneak out at night and steal corn from an abandoned field and vegetables from nearby farms. One time his jacket was caught on the barbwire fence. He thought about his uncle who had been killed by the Russians during World War I when he was caught stealing food. Fortunately for Tibor, he was able to free himself from the wire.

When he found out that the camp cooks were throwing out meat infected with maggots and other parasites, he managed to smuggle it out of the trash as he had done in the concentration camp. When spring came and the rivers thawed, Tibor was required to haul food from the boats. He and another prisoner named Leonard Chiarelli hatched a plan. Tibor would go below deck, steal a piece of meat, and emerge carrying a sack of rice on his back. As he moved toward the boat’s edge, Chiarelli would swim to the boat’s waterline. Tibor would tell the guards he needed to urinate. He would go to the side of the boat, unzip his coat, and let the meat slip off the boat. Chiarelli would catch it before it hit the water.

The Chinese commanders had a garden, which they called their victory garden in mockery of the gardens Americans had during World War II. The sight was an affront to the starving POWs. One night Tibor raided the garden of tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, and beans. The commandant screamed for an hour. After that the POWs began calling the Chinese officer “The Screaming Skull.”

Tibor not only fed the POWs physically but also psychologically. POWs were dying of “Give-Up-Itis.” Men would stop eating, drinking, and fighting the lice and bedbugs. Other prisoners would try to slap them back into reality. Tibor went to a field of goats and sheep, gathered the droppings, and brought them back to a soldier with a case of “Give-Up-Itis.” He told the soldier that it was medication from the Red Cross. The soldier swallowed the droppings. A few days later the soldier was up and walking around. Tibor would take charred wood from the cooking fires, grind it into a powder, and coach men to eat it like he had done in Mauthausen.

A prisoner named Carl McClendon recalled that Tibor was a crazy guy who would give food to total strangers from different units, not just Item Company. Even as he became thin and drawn, and with a leg wound dogging him, he was constantly on the move. He told the prisoners that as a Jew he was compelled to help others. “You Jews know everything,” one soldier said without a hint of antisemitism. He became an inspiration. If Tibor Rubin could survive displaced person camps and a concentration camp, then the POWs could survive Death Valley.

Tibor also led the prisoners in defying the North Korean guards and the Chinese officers like The Skull.

One day the North Koreans called the prisoners out of their huts and lined them up, execution style. Some prisoners cried out for mercy. Others urinated on themselves. Some fell on their hands and knees. Tibor pulled them back up. He told the group to pray. He began chanting in Hebrew. The soldiers raised their weapons to the firing position. However, the Chinese showed up and stopped the North Koreans just in time.

The soldiers were given propaganda magazines to read. They tore them up and used them as toilet paper. During the brainwashing programs, Tibor would tell the Skull he did not have any brains to wash. He was given a paper to sign denouncing America. Even though there were several signatures of officers on the paper and Tibor had only been in America a year and a half, he refused to sign.

During the summer Tibor shaved his head. He had been afraid to cut his hair since his hair had been shaved against his will at the concentration camp. In some ways, his prisoner-of-war experience was healing.

When The Skull asked him why he had shaved, he replied he was a member of the KKK. Some of the other prisoners concocted a plan to tell The Skull that Tibor was a leader of the KKK who committed violence against blacks. During a lecture on the evils of American racism, The Skull called out Tibor as a leader of the KKK. The Southern boys laughed him to scorn. “Tibor’s a Jew,” they hollered at the commandant. “They don’t like them either.”

One day Tibor was confronted by The Skull. The Chinese knew he was a Hungarian citizen, not an American one, and told him he had been duped into being a capitalist, a warmonger. and am imperialist. The Skull would invite Tibor to his office every week or so, offering Tibor safe passage to Hungary, which as part of the Soviet Block in Eastern Europe was now Communist. Tibor refused. When he returned to his hut, his fellow prisoners told him to take the chance to get out of the prison. Tibor replied in true red-blooded American fashion, “We have pancakes, eggs, and bacon. The Communist had nothing to offer.”

Even when officers collaborated with the Chinese, Tibor did not judge them. The prisoners were offered a place on a Peace Committee. Claude Batchelor, an 18-year-old soldier, said he would take the job as part of the committee. He used his position to get more medicines and food for the men. Tibor did not consider him a traitor.

Tibor openly mocked the Skull. He knew that as a survivor of a German concentration camp, people would ask questions if he mysteriously died or disappeared. He pretended to walk an invisible dog and ride an invisible bike around the camp.

In January 1953, Tibor’s wounded leg became infected, his knee swelled to the size of a softball. In March Tibor was one of 150 American GIs exchanged for Communist prisoners. Before Tibor’s departure, The Skull asked him about fighting for world peace, for propaganda reasons. Tibor told him he would be fighting for all the world peace he could get when he got home. When Tibor was treated in Hawaii, the doctors told Tibor he had been released just in time before the infection became deadly.

Tibor Rubin An American Hero

One of the first things Tibor did when he arrived stateside was present the US Army with a list of names of the POWs in Death Valley that he had smuggled out during the exchange. Now families would know that their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons were alive.

A few months after Tibor was freed, the Korean War ended. One of the reasons the war had dragged out for so long was the question of expatriating Chinese and North Korean POWs. As part of Operation Big Switch, 74,6000 Chinese and North Korean POWs returned home, 23,000 officially requested to be resettled in the free world, and another 10,000 were simply released. Of 13,000 UN POWs, 333 Koreans, 23 Americans, and one Briton decided to stay with the Communists.

One of those who stayed was Claude Batchelor, who had been told he would be working for world peace. It took him less than a year to realize he had been duped and he requested repatriation to the US.

Batchelor was arrested upon his return. He had written a 148-page single-spaced manuscript that explained in painstaking detail how the Chinese led him astray with promises of working for world peace. The manuscript was used against him in his court-martial. Tibor was called as a witness. He spoke in Batchelor’s defense, pointing out that he had collaborated with the enemy to obtain better medical care and food for the other prisoners. Batchelor was convicted of collaborating with the enemy and sentenced to life in prison. Despite the hysteria of the 1950s’ Red Scare, there was such an uproar over the way the military treated the returning POWs that after four years Batchelor was released with a dishonorable discharge. When a rabbi asked Tibor how he had managed during his imprisonment, he replied. “I knew how to talk to those Chinese. I had experience with Nazis before them.”

The story of a Holocaust survivor surviving another prison camp was an instant sensation. Tibor went through a whirlwind of photo shoots and interviews. He walked down the red carpet at the premiere of the World War II prison camp drama Stalag 17. He was introduced to producers, opera singers, writers, actors and actresses. There was talk of book deals and a movie starring John Garfield. But then it all stopped. Tibor’s sister hoped his story would ensure that the world would not forget the Holocaust. But Tibor had had his fill of movie executives and actresses. He just wanted to put it all behind him.

He retreated into private life. He married and fathered two children. He became an active member of his community, volunteering at the VA. Then in the 1980s, he was in Las Vegas at a national gathering of ex-POWs when he was approached by Randal Briere.

“Where are your medals,” Randal asked.

Tibor had his Purple Hearts.

“No,” Briere said. “Your Silver Star and Medal of Honor.”

 That meeting kicked off a campaign in which former comrades and POWs contacted each other and government officials to petition for Tibor’s medals.

There was a statute of limitations of two years on the MOH since the paperwork had to be done in a timely fashion. Even though the statute of limitations for Korean War medals had been extended to 1957, the petition for Tibor’s medal was three decades too late.

Tibor’s heroism defies time, his comrades said. They pointed out that Buffalo Bill, who had not served in the armed services, had been awarded the Medal of Honor in 1989 for scouting, sixty years after his death. MS Peyton was finally located, but he died in 1986. Another obstacle was the idea that Korean War POWs had cooperated with the enemy while in captivity. Despite resisting the camp authorities, many believed that they had been tainted by the Communist propaganda to which they had been exposed.

But when the story of another Jewish soldier, Private Leonard Kravitz, came to light, it was clear that antisemitism had denied Tibor and Kravitz their medals. In March 1951, Private Kravitz had covered his comrades with a machine gun as they fell back. His body was discovered the next day, surrounded by enemy dead. Despite the CO recommending him for the MOH, he only received the Distinguished Service Cross. In 2001 both the House and Senate introduced bills opening the files of Jewish war veterans who had not been considered for the Medal. The bill was signed into law as part of the Defense Authorization Act of 2002.

During the time Tibor had kept the talk of medals to himself. He rarely talked about his Holocaust and POW camp experiences. But when he arrived at the White House in 2005 for his Medal of Honor ceremony, he realized that God had allowed him to survive to tell the stories of others, of the other POWs and Holocaust survivors. And so he did until his death in 2015.

Tibor’s story would make a great movie due to his courage and selfless service. It would ensure that both the Holocaust and the experience of POWs during the Korean War are remembered. In the latter’s case, it would set the record straight regarding those who have been much maligned. It would honor the bravery and sacrifice of Korean War veterans and their fallen comrades. It would rebuke antisemitism. Audiences would be thrilled by Tibor scavenging in the prison camps. They would laugh as Tibor mocks The Skull. They would be inspired by Tibor’s bravery and mental strength as he overcame obstacle after obstacle until he became an American hero.

As someone who likes to tell the stories of others, I feel like I have a special connection to the story of Tibor who spent his last days telling others of the Holocaust and Korean War prisoners of war. Like Tibor, I know what it is like when leaders overlook my service and refuse to acknowledge their wrongs. Seeing the injustice of Tibor’s story righted on the big screen could help me heal from my own trauma. I could see Edward Zwick, Angelina Jolie, David L. Cunningham, Roland Joffe, or even Steven Spielberg at the director’s helm.

Because it is a harrowing, but also exciting and inspirational story of overcoming prison camps and bigotry, I believe Single Handed by Leonard Cohen should be a movie honoring our Korean War veterans and their fallen comrades.