Imagine you're a 13-year old Jewish boy forced to flee your home in Hungary to avoid being taken by the Nazis. Only miles from the Swiss border, you're captured and sent to the dreaded Mauthausen concentration camp where a single misstep - a defiant look, a botched work assignment, a single louse in your hair - could mean instant execution. Through guile, courage and luck, you survive the Holocaust and make your way to America. While other young
refugees are busy milking the opportunities in their new homeland, you do the unthinkable and enlist in the U.S. Army where you volunteer to fight the communists in Korea. The enemy is fierce but the greatest danger lies in the bigotry of a redneck U.S. Sergeant who continually puts you in harms way because you're a Jew. Fighting valiantly to save yourself and your fellow soldiers, your bravery will earn the praise of commanding officers who twice recommend you for the Medal of Honor - an award you'll be denied fore another 50 years.
There's no need to 'imagine' any such story. Tibor 'Teddy' Rubin lived it all, and Daniel M. Cohen brings his remarkable journey to light in his riveting new book, SINGLE HANDED(Penguin). In his brilliant recounting of Tibor's amazing odyssey, Cohen offers such vibrant detail and moving emotion that we can almost feel the terror and utter deprivation of of the Nazi death camp, and the numbing cold and carnage of the bloody Korean battlefield. What stands out amid the horror and struggle , though, is the indefatigable, upbeat spirit of the spritely little Hungarian who went far, far above the call of duty, continually placing himself in harm's way for the sake of his fellow prisoners and soldiers, only to see his bravery and sacrifice ignored by the country he loved and fought for. Painstakingly researched and drawn from hours of interviews with Rubin, his relatives and friends, SINGLE HANDED gives us a life-affirming portrait of a caring, humble, remarkable man whose life defines the terms 'hero' and 'patriot'.