Tivadar Soros ( eo, Teodoro Ŝvarc; 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 ( name written in eastern order), (born György Schwartz, August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist. , he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated mo ...

, and engineer

Paul Soros Paul Soros ( hu, Soros Pál; born Pál Schwartz; June 5, 1926 – June 15, 2013) was a Hungarian-born American mechanical engineer, inventor, businessman and philanthropist. Soros founded Soros Associates, which designs and develops bulk handling ...

. 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 Erzebet 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 University at Cluj, in what was then Hungarian Transylvania. Soros fought in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

and spent years in a prison camp in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part ...

before escaping. He founded the

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communic ...

literary magazine ''

Literatura Mondo ''Literatura Mondo'' (''Literary World'') was a literary Esperanto periodical and publishing house in Budapest, Hungary between 1922 and 1949. It became the focal point of the so-called Budapest School of Esperanto literature. It was founded by ...

'' (''Literary World'') in 1922, having learned the language from a fellow soldier during the war and edited it until 1924. He wrote the short novel ''Modernaj Robinzonoj'' (Modern Robinsons) (1923), republished in 1999 by Bero (an Esperanto publisher) afterwards translated into several languages and ''Maskerado ĉirkaŭ la morto'' (Masquerade (dance) around death), published 1965, an autobiographical novel about his experience during the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

occupation of

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...

, Hungary. ''Maskerado'' has been translated into English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Czech, Russian, German and Turkish. He died in New York in 1968.

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 Austro-Hungarian military personnel of World War I Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in World War I Hungarian editors Hungarian Esperantists Hungarian Jews Hungarian writers Lawyers from New York City American magazine founders Tivadar Writers of Esperanto literature