Tibor Eliahu Beerman (August 13, 1925 – August 7, 2015) was an architect in the United States. His work, much of it modernist, includes synagogues, residences, and the 1966 Galveston County Courthouse. His brother died at

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

, and Beerman wrote about his own experiences during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

.Tibor Beerman
/ref> Beerman was born to a Hungarian family in

Berehovo Berehove ( uk, Берегове; hu, Beregszász) is a city located in Zakarpattia Oblast (province) in western Ukraine, near the border with Hungary. It is the cultural centre of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine. Serving as the administrativ ...

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

(which became Beregszász, Hungary again in 1938 and was made part of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

after World War II, today part of

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

). He immigrated to the U.S. to study architecture at the University of Texas in Austin after surviving the Holocaust and World War II. He was

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

. He and Ben J. Kotin designed the Beth Jacob Synagogue sanctuary and halls when additions and remodeling were carried out in the 1960s ( Raymond Rapp was the synagogue's original architect). He also designed the Congregation B'nai Israel synagogue in Galveston where he was a member of the congregation. He was interviewed by the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute. Architect Louis Oliver and Beerman worked on a renovation project for the Old Central Cultural Center. He also designed residential projects such as the Baxter House at 1309 Harbor View with fellow immigrant Ben Botkin in 1964. Beerman bore a tattoo with his identifying number from Auschwitz and was held in several camps during the war before being liberated by American soldiers.

Works

* Galveston County Courthouse (1966) * Congregation B'nai Israel synagogue at 3008 Avenue O in Galveston *Beth Jacob Synagogue sanctuary and halls with Ben J. Kotin *Baxter House at 1309 Harbor View with fellow immigrant Ben Botkin in 1964 * Old Central Cultural with Louis Oliver, renovation of a former school for African Americans

References

1925 births 2015 deaths 20th-century American Jews Hungarian Jews People from Berehove People from Galveston, Texas Architects from Texas American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent 20th-century American architects Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States Auschwitz concentration camp survivors University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture alumni Modernist architects from the United States Jewish architects Synagogue architecture 21st-century American Jews {{US-architect-stub