Tivadar Soros

The native form of this personal name is Soros Tivadar. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
Tivadar Soros
Soros c. 1930s
Native name
Soros Tivadar (after 1936)
Birth nameTheodor Schwartz
Born(1893-04-07)7 April 1893
Nyírbakta, Transleithania, Austria-Hungary (modern-day Hungary)
Died22 February 1968(1968-02-22) (aged 74)
New York, United States
Allegiance Austria-Hungary
Service / branchAustro-Hungarian Army
Years of service1914–1918
Known forEsperanto magazine editor, lawyer
Battles / warsWorld War I
Alma materFranz Joseph University, Kolozsvár (now Cluj)
Spouse(s)
Erzsébet Szücs
​
(m. 1924)​
Children

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.

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.

  1. ^ The family changed its name in 1936 from Schwartz to Soros, in response to growing antisemitism with the rise of Fascism.
  2. ^ Soros, Tivadar (2001). Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-occupied Hungary. New York: Arcade Publishing.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Hershey Jr., Robert D. (15 June 2013). "Paul Soros, Shipping Innovator, Dies at 87". New York Times. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  11. ^ "Paul Soros, Innovator in Shipping Design, Dies". Wall Street Journal. Associated Press. 15 June 2013. Retrieved 10 July 2013.