Tibor Rubin’s Medicine (Part 1)

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Speaker 53 It was 1951, and a young American serviceman named Johnny lay dying on the dirty floor of a mud-walled hut.

Speaker 24 He was a prisoner of war, one of thousands of U.S.

Speaker 22 soldiers who had the bad luck to be here, a Chinese-run camp in the far north of Korea.

Speaker 57 Death was everywhere in the camp, death from dysentery, and pneumonia and starvation.

Speaker 23 Deaths from untreated battle wounds left to fester.

Speaker 5 And deaths like Johnny.

Speaker 20 A soldier exhausted after months of abuse and captivity.

Speaker 63 Unable to eat or move, slowly abandoning the will to live.

Speaker 56 The other POWs called it, give up Itis.

Speaker 23 There was someone else in the room with Johnny, a scrawny 21-year-old soldier with a thick head of hair and an even thicker Eastern European accent.

Speaker 18 He knelt beside Johnny and said, The Red Cross has just dropped off their newest medicine.

Speaker 30 I'll give it to you.

Speaker 69 but in turn, you have to pull yourself together.

Speaker 70 You can't give up.

Speaker 60 Then he gave Johnny a small brown pill.

Speaker 53 The other prisoners in the camp had noticed this man with the medicine.

Speaker 54 Something was different about him.

Speaker 38 When they couldn't stand up and were lying in their own filth, he washed them clean.

Speaker 19 He picked the lights off them when they couldn't do it themselves.

Speaker 72 He sneaked bits of food to men who were dying of hunger.

Speaker 53 And he made them smile.

Speaker 5 He cracked jokes and clowned around.

Speaker 56 He reminded them of the great life waiting for them back home in America. They just had to live long enough to make it there.

Speaker 5 That guy with the accent wasn't a doctor or a clergyman or even an officer.

Speaker 53 He didn't have any influence or special training.

Speaker 75 What he did have was experience.

Speaker 63 Experience in a camp even worse than this one.

Speaker 53 A place he'd lived when he was just 14 years old.

Speaker 70 A Nazi death camp.

Speaker 52 I'm Malcolm Gladwell and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.

Speaker 1 The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.

Speaker 15 Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.

Speaker 55 This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

Speaker 55 Today's episode is about Tybor Rubin, the only Holocaust survivor to win the Medal of Honor.

Speaker 23 His story is about more than courage and bravery, it's about compassion and the simple truth that sometimes hope is the most powerful defense we have.

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Speaker 3 With this tool, you can find the vehicle that's right for you as you search through inventory and compare models.

Speaker 11 And you could get an amazing rate when you finance with Navy Federal.

Speaker 80 Navy Federal strives to support all active duty veterans and their families to achieve their personal and financial goals.

Speaker 83 And this partnership with TrueCar is one of the many tools Navy Federal uses to help its members.

Speaker 33 Make your plan with Navy Federal and TrueCar today.

Speaker 31 Navy Federal Credit Union.

Speaker 21 To qualify for the $250 bonus, car purchase and financing must be completed by September 2nd, 2025.

Speaker 31 Terms and conditions apply and are available at navyfederal.org slash truecar.

Speaker 30 Credit and collateral subject to approval.

Speaker 83 Navy Federal is insured by NCUA.

Speaker 41 In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

Speaker 43 T-Mobile knows all about that.

Speaker 44 They're now the best network, according to the experts at OOCLA Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

Speaker 46 With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

Speaker 29 With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

Speaker 74 With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

Speaker 62 And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

Speaker 10 That's your business, Supercharged.

Speaker 48 Learn more at supermobile.com.

Speaker 41 Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

Speaker 43 where you can see the sky.

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Speaker 22 Tybor Rubin was born in 1929 in a small town in Hungary.

Speaker 63 He had a loving family with four older siblings and a little sister he adored.

Speaker 88 Parents who took care of him, a nice house.

Speaker 67 As a kid, he was always getting into scrapes, playing soccer with his big brother Emery.

Speaker 88 Typical kid stuff.

Speaker 9 It wasn't fancy, but life was pretty good.

Speaker 59 Except that Tybor was Jewish and the Third Reich was on the rise in nearby Germany.

Speaker 37 By the end of the 1930s, the Hungarian government had begun emulating the Nazis, Nazis, denying Jews equal rights under the law.

Speaker 82 There were jobs they couldn't hold.

Speaker 88 They couldn't marry Christians.

Speaker 9 Then in 1940, Hungary formally joined the Axis alliance.

Speaker 87 Even so, Hungarian Jews were more protected than Jews in other Axis countries.

Speaker 62 The government refused to deport its Jewish citizens to concentration camps despite pressure from their Nazi allies.

Speaker 55 So the Rubin family felt relatively safe in their home country, even as things turned.

Speaker 20 After all, Tyber's father was a decorated soldier of the First World War.

Speaker 7 He was a patriot.

Speaker 53 More than that, the Rubens believed in the essential goodness of people.

Speaker 7 They taught Tybor and his siblings to act with compassion.

Speaker 85 Even when everything in his life argued against it, Tybor never let go of that lesson.

Speaker 57 Here he is talking about them in that super thick Hungarian accent I told you about.

Speaker 90 My mother, she used to always tell us, don't say anything bad about anybody.

Speaker 90 If you don't know anything good, you don't ever hurt anybody, because maybe we have a different religion, but according to the good Lord, that's your brothers and sisters.

Speaker 89 Everything changed in March of 1944.

Speaker 53 The Nazis seized power in Hungary.

Speaker 18 Almost immediately, plans were drawn up for the transportation of the country's Jews, about half a million people, to extermination camps.

Speaker 34 The Hungarian authorities didn't stand in the way of the plan.

Speaker 5 And as the Nazis began rounding up Jews or just killing them on the spot, it became clear that the world wasn't working according to the Rubin family values.

Speaker 62 Soon, Tyborg was hearing whispered conversations between his parents.

Speaker 67 Refugees were coming through their little village on the run from the Nazis.

Speaker 5 The world was getting darker.

Speaker 5 Emery was 20 and their parents worried he would be pressed into military service, so they sent him across the border to Czechoslovakia where an aunt lived.

Speaker 56 She had arranged for Emery to hide with a friend who was a Gentile.

Speaker 4 Tiber worshipped his brother and was panicked to watch him go, but Emri promised Tiber he'd be back soon.

Speaker 68 Just a few months later, A group of Polish men were passing through town on the run for Switzerland.

Speaker 53 Tiber's parents met with the men and made a wrenching decision.

Speaker 64 Tiber should leave with them.

Speaker 65 He had to try to escape what was coming.

Speaker 5 They sent their son off with a group of total strangers.

Speaker 64 They were that desperate to save him.

Speaker 30 Tiber was 14.

Speaker 10 After days of trekking, the group reached the Swiss border, only to be captured by the Nazis.

Speaker 62 They were sent to a concentration camp named Mauthausen in Austria.

Speaker 7 It looked like a stone fortress on a hill.

Speaker 62 It had been constructed carefully, not just to house Jews, but political prisoners, conscientious objectors, enemy soldiers from almost every country in German-occupied Europe.

Speaker 85 It had some of the harshest conditions and one of the highest death rates of any of the Nazi camps.

Speaker 62 I don't need to tell you how bad concentration camps were.

Speaker 10 No food, no hope, hard labor, guards who would shoot inmates for sport, the living and the dying crammed into the same putrid spaces.

Speaker 55 Tiber was just a terrified kid.

Speaker 54 When he arrived at the camp, an SS officer told him, None of you Jews will make it out of here alive.

Speaker 90 So many people died there every day. But so many people, mountain of people dead, they didn't even have time to burn them, you know.

Speaker 90 The life over there was no future, nothing to look forward, just when I gonna be next.

Speaker 53 But Tiber was smart and resourceful, and he learned the ways of the camp.

Speaker 55 One prisoner taught him to pick the lice off every single day so he wouldn't get typhus.

Speaker 53 When Tyber got sick from the rotted potatoes and dirty water they were feeding him, a man in his bunk made him eat charcoal to settle his stomach.

Speaker 55 The Polish guys he had traveled with showed him how to steal food from the officers' garbage dump.

Speaker 13 He thought of himself like a rat, cunning, quick and silent, doing whatever he could to survive.

Speaker 90 We wasn't no human being anymore.

Speaker 57 He tried not to make connections with other prisoners.

Speaker 18 Friendships felt dangerous.

Speaker 61 Other teenagers could be unruly and get them all into trouble.

Speaker 10 Plus, the friends he made seemed inevitably to die.

Speaker 64 Even in the crowded bunk rooms, he became more and more isolated.

Speaker 32 Alone.

Speaker 89 Then one evening, during roll call, he saw a familiar face across the prison yard.

Speaker 7 Tiber stared.

Speaker 5 He couldn't believe it.

Speaker 4 It was his brother, Emery.

Speaker 54 He pushed his way through the other prisoners to get to him.

Speaker 79 Emery and Tiber hugged.

Speaker 4 They held hands all through that roll call.

Speaker 24 It seemed like a miracle.

Speaker 52 Tiber felt like he knew who he was again.

Speaker 53 A little bit of his humanity was restored.

Speaker 5 Emery had been caught in Czechoslovakia and had spent months doing forced hard labor.

Speaker 37 Then, without warning, he'd been loaded on a train to Mauthausen.

Speaker 87 Emory was assigned to a different barracks than Tybor, and because he was a carpenter, he was often sent on construction projects outside Mauthausen itself.

Speaker 54 The brothers rarely saw each other, but just knowing Emory was there reminded Tybor that he was loved.

Speaker 60 And that kept him going.

Speaker 30 The famous Viennese psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl would later write about this exact phenomenon.

Speaker 18 He said that those in the death camps who lost their faith in the future would die a kind of emotional death.

Speaker 64 The loss of hope would hasten the loss of the will to live.

Speaker 67 He wrote that it was, quote, possible to practice the art of living, even in a concentration camp.

Speaker 59 Frankl believed that if we react to terrible circumstances with courage and kindness and unselfishness, then life can take on a deeper meaning, even in the face of inhumanity.

Speaker 4 Emory's arrival was that beacon of hope for Tybor.

Speaker 26 He held on to it and to the lesson it taught him, that faith in the future was powerful.

Speaker 77 Tyber was in Muthausen for more than a year.

Speaker 13 amidst the death, hatred, and squalor.

Speaker 57 Winter was viciously cold, and the prisoners were dressed in rags that didn't keep out the chill.

Speaker 10 They stood in the snow, shivering, while their captors did roll call.

Speaker 24 Everyone was starving.

Speaker 7 They would sleep squeezed next to each other like sardines.

Speaker 60 Often, they would wake up next to someone who had died in the night. That's where Tiber turned 15.

Speaker 13 Time ground on, but then Tiber started to hear whispers, rumors spreading.

Speaker 77 The Germans were losing the war, the Allies were on the way.

Speaker 18 But Tiber wasn't sure what to believe until one day, in April 1945, the prisoners heard the drone of Allied planes overhead.

Speaker 60 Work at the camp ground to a halt as first some, then all of the SS commands started to flee.

Speaker 53 They had tried to destroy evidence of what they had done, dismantling the installations for mass killing and burning incriminating documents.

Speaker 18 By May 3rd, the German soldiers were gone.

Speaker 87 Two days later, the inmates heard the rattle of tanks.

Speaker 63 The Americans had arrived.

Speaker 90 One day,

Speaker 90 five tanks showed up. They break down the gate.
When we see the American troops, you know, well, everybody was crying.

Speaker 90 The people go and they kiss their feet. We call them the G.I.
Joe's.

Speaker 87 One of the soldiers who was there that day remembered what it was like to liberate the camp.

Speaker 67 His name was Charles Sandler.

Speaker 11 He was in the 11th Armored Division of the U.S.

Speaker 91 Army.

Speaker 24 Here he is talking about his experiences in an interview from the 1980s.

Speaker 93 You have to picture this huge monument. This is not just a shack.

Speaker 93 Mauthausen camp proper was like a huge castle on a high ground, a very permanent, if it weren't a concentration camp, I'd say it was a beautiful structure.

Speaker 93 As we approached, one of the strongest impressions, which I still

Speaker 93 very

Speaker 93 clearly recall, was that of the scent. What we smelled was a smell of death, of bodies rotting, hundreds of bodies stacked like cordwood,

Speaker 93 bodies still in the crematoria.

Speaker 53 The prisoners, at least those who were strong enough to stand, greeted the army with elation.

Speaker 93 Well, with unmistakable, just never-to-be-forgotten joy and screaming and hollering.

Speaker 93 And the gates were open, they have to picture a situation of 15,000 souls that were just beyond description, starving, beaten, abused, and they just wanted to break out of captivity.

Speaker 93 I could have been elected anything that day. I will never forget and always grateful that I had that opportunity of

Speaker 93 performing that small service.

Speaker 75 What Tiber noticed about the American soldiers was that they were more than fighters.

Speaker 5 He couldn't believe how kind and compassionate they were.

Speaker 6 They gave life.

Speaker 53 They weren't just taking it away.

Speaker 90 The medic pick us up, filthy, stink.

Speaker 90 They have to wash us and clean us. And the day care of us unbelievable.
This was something you never forget.

Speaker 30 Tiber and Emery were skin and bones, days away from death, but the Rubin brothers were two of the lucky ones.

Speaker 24 At least 95,000 people had died in Mauthausen.

Speaker 68 Tiber and Emery returned home to their tiny town in Hungary.

Speaker 18 Their sister, Irene, had survived as well, and she found them there.

Speaker 11 Of the 120 Jewish families in their town, members of just three had returned.

Speaker 92 Among the missing were Tiber's parents and his little sister, who had been only 10.

Speaker 87 Eventually, Emery told Tiber the news.

Speaker 23 All three of them had been murdered at Auschwitz.

Speaker 61 When they divided the prisoners who could work from the ones who would immediately be killed, Tiber's mother had insisted on accompanying his little sister to the gas chamber.

Speaker 26 She didn't want her to die alone.

Speaker 6 His mother's sacrifice, the American GIs, both set Tiber on his life's course of holding fast to what makes us human, even when inhumanity surrounds us.

Speaker 61 Hungary was occupied by the Russians, and the Rubin siblings got out of the country as fast as they possibly could, before the borders closed.

Speaker 53 They made it to a camp for displaced persons that was run by the United Nations and the U.S.

Speaker 68 Army.

Speaker 19 Tiber spent three years there before he finally got his wish, permission to move to the United States.

Speaker 18 In 1948, he boarded a boat to New York.

Speaker 53 As the ship entered the harbor, Tiber went to the deck to see the Manhattan skyline.

Speaker 67 He opened his suitcase and, in a grand gesture, he threw his clothes from the old country overboard.

Speaker 63 He watched them flutter down into the water.

Speaker 58 He was going to start fresh.

Speaker 53 Hope had sustained him in Mothausen and in the camps as he waited waited to start this new life.

Speaker 60 Where other survivors of the war might have bitterness or regret, Tiber instead had an unflappable optimism, faith in the future, and grand plans for his new life in the United States.

Speaker 13 Once he was there, he was going to fulfill a vow he'd made the day the American soldiers liberated Mauthausen.

Speaker 90 I made the promise. If Lord help me, if I ever go to America, I'm going to become a GI Joe.

Speaker 31 This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union.

Speaker 38 Navy Federal can help you find and finance the right vehicle with ease.

Speaker 33 And this summer, you're in the driver's seat with savings.

Speaker 80 You can get a $250 bonus when you buy your next car through Navy Federal's Car Buying Service, powered by TrueCar and financed with Navy Federal.

Speaker 3 With this tool, you can find the vehicle that's right for you as you search through inventory and compare models.

Speaker 11 And you could get an amazing rate when you finance with Navy Federal.

Speaker 80 Navy Federal strives to support all active duty veterans and their families to achieve their personal and financial goals.

Speaker 83 And this partnership with TrueCar is one of the many tools Navy Federal uses to help its members.

Speaker 33 Make your plan with Navy Federal and TrueCar today.

Speaker 25 Navy Federal Credit Union.

Speaker 21 To qualify for the $250 bonus, car purchase and financing must be completed by September 2nd, 2025.

Speaker 31 Terms and conditions apply and are available at navyfederal.org/slash TrueCar. Credit and collateral subject to approval.

Speaker 83 Navy Federal is insured by NCUA.

Speaker 41 In today's super-competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

Speaker 43 T-Mobile knows all about that.

Speaker 44 They're now the best network, according to the experts at OOCLA Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

Speaker 47 With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

Speaker 84 With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

Speaker 74 With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

Speaker 62 And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

Speaker 10 That's your business, supercharged.

Speaker 48 Learn more at supermobile.com.

Speaker 41 Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

Speaker 43 where you can see the sky.

Speaker 51 Best network based on analysis by OOCLA of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

Speaker 5 American Military University, where service members like you can access high-quality, affordable education built for your lifestyle.

Speaker 9 With online programs that fit around deployments, training, and unpredictable schedules, AMU makes it possible to earn your degree no matter where duty takes you.

Speaker 16 Their preferred military rate keeps tuition at just $250 per credit hour for undergraduate and master's tuition.

Speaker 23 And with 24/7 mental health support plus career coaching and other services, AMU is committed to your success during and after your service.

Speaker 6 Learn more at amu.apus.edu slash military. That's amu.apus.edu slash military.

Speaker 20 Fast forward a couple years.

Speaker 68 Tiber was 20.

Speaker 60 I'm going to take a second here to tell you what he looked like so you can get a mental picture.

Speaker 18 He wasn't a super tall guy, a puberty spent eating dirty scraps and moldy bread will mess with your growth spurt.

Speaker 77 But he looked like a movie star, like a young Marlon Branduff.

Speaker 65 He had gotten a series of jobs once he settled in Manhattan.

Speaker 53 He worked at a garment factory and in a slaughterhouse briefly.

Speaker 56 Then he got hired in a fancy grocery store on Broadway.

Speaker 87 He couldn't really speak English, but he charmed the ladies into buying whatever he was selling. He was an outrageous flirt.

Speaker 58 And right around this time, he changed his name to the very American, Ted.

Speaker 90 So I was in heaven. That was America.

Speaker 56 Ted hadn't forgotten about his vow to join the Army.

Speaker 9 In fact, he kept trying to join, but he kept failing the admissions test.

Speaker 18 He tried in New York twice, and then in the fall of 1949, Ted moved west, ever optimistic about finding more opportunity.

Speaker 52 He settled in Oakland, California, where he went to the Army recruitment office

Speaker 32 again.

Speaker 18 And there, he finally passed the entrance exam on his third try.

Speaker 40 He might have had a little extra help.

Speaker 70 Not saying he cheated, but he could talk his way into pretty much anything, even in his broken English.

Speaker 57 He qualified for a sharpshooter badge, and his unit was sent to Okinawa for training.

Speaker 13 And then, war was declared in Korea.

Speaker 57 The troops got ready to ship out for combat, but the captain told Ted he couldn't go with them because he wasn't a U.S.

Speaker 28 citizen yet.

Speaker 54 He had to go to a safe zone instead.

Speaker 90 He says, Captain, I cannot go in a safe zone because I made a promise. And when I make a promise, I have to keep it.
He said, you are your mind. I said, I just have to go because I owed it.

Speaker 90 To the soldiers who liberated me, saved my life. I was going to Korea with the regiment.
And I did.

Speaker 21 So, Ted had asked, willingly, to be sent with his unit.

Speaker 26 to a war zone.

Speaker 34 And once he arrived in Korea, he got way more than his fair share of danger.

Speaker 75 This was because of one guy.

Speaker 71 We're going to call him Sergeant A.

Speaker 56 In interviews, Ted never wanted to give this guy's real name.

Speaker 10 It's there in his service records, but it was important to Ted that he never identified him.

Speaker 90 I don't want to mention any name because you say this is... the man is dead.
He cannot hurt me anymore. So I don't want to mention his name.

Speaker 7 I'm going to respect Ted's wishes.

Speaker 59 Just trust me that that Sergeant A was a real person,

Speaker 16 unfortunately.

Speaker 58 Sergeant A was a foul-mouthed World War II vet from Texas and an equal opportunity bigot.

Speaker 18 He hated the South Korean troops who were serving alongside the Americans.

Speaker 21 He hated black people, Mexicans, Italians.

Speaker 52 Though fortunately for those folks, none of them were assigned to his company.

Speaker 6 And Sergeant A really hated Jews.

Speaker 64 He couldn't believe that he had the bad luck to get Ted assigned to his unit.

Speaker 90 He said, no, the Jews would be coming here to fight a war.

Speaker 90 I said, well,

Speaker 90 you're looking one of them because I'm here.

Speaker 90 So he said that to me, you're the stupidest Sarama-bitch fucking Jew I ever met. All of a sudden, I say, I have to show to him I'm gonna be as good as him.

Speaker 70 This is example 5000 of Ted's refusal to let hatred chip away at his essential faith in humanity.

Speaker 18 One day, his company was ordered to join a formation several miles to the south.

Speaker 7 The enemy was coming their way and they needed to move to a safer location.

Speaker 36 There was a problem.

Speaker 18 They had more ammo than they could transport.

Speaker 59 They needed to travel to the next position, get some trucks, and drive back to pick it up.

Speaker 64 Sergeant A yelled, Find me the Hungarian.

Speaker 90 And he said that we have a lot of ammunition and weapons and everything. You're gonna be a guard.

Speaker 90 And he said, we're gonna come back and pick it up.

Speaker 53 Ted was being left behind, alone, on top of a ridge, a ridge that was the only thing standing between the approaching enemy and the U.S.

Speaker 67 troops.

Speaker 5 He was supposed to wait there and guard a giant pile of weapons by himself.

Speaker 53 This was not a good situation.

Speaker 55 It was obvious to everyone.

Speaker 52 A single man wouldn't be able to keep an enemy patrol from from taking the ammunition or from advancing on the company's new position.

Speaker 62 But Ted couldn't and wouldn't say no.

Speaker 21 And Sergeant A promised they would be back to get him before dark.

Speaker 60 Then the company packed up and left.

Speaker 64 The hours ticked by.

Speaker 65 The shadows grew longer.

Speaker 88 Ted kept looking at his watch, kept waiting, hoping to hear the rattle of trucks.

Speaker 77 Then...

Speaker 75 It was dark.

Speaker 55 By midnight, it it was clear to Ted that the trucks weren't coming.

Speaker 53 And he realized an entire enemy company could get to the top of this ridge in a matter of minutes. It would be dozens against just him.

Speaker 58 To anyone else, the situation would have seemed truly hopeless.

Speaker 60 Not Ted.

Speaker 73 He looked at the giant pile of ammunition and started swirling grenades into the foxholes along the ridge.

Speaker 90 Then I have my M1 rifle. I load them down, a few of them,

Speaker 90 and put in some ammunition.

Speaker 66 He gathered as much machine gun ammo as he could handle and placed that in strategic positions too. He needed to trick the North Koreans into believing that there was more than one soldier on guard.

Speaker 73 Then he waited for the enemy to arrive.

Speaker 60 And arrive they did.

Speaker 63 The moon moved from behind a cloud and Ted saw them.

Speaker 64 A hundred or more North Korean soldiers silently scaling the hill.

Speaker 53 Then it was whistles and yells and the sound of a bugle.

Speaker 76 The onslaught had begun.

Speaker 5 Ted hurled grenades one after another as fast as he could pull the pins.

Speaker 7 Bone-rattling blasts of motor shells came back at him.

Speaker 19 He crawled behind a machine gun and started firing into the darkness.

Speaker 30 Bullets zipped through the air in his direction.

Speaker 90 Then I shoot with my rifle, then I shoot my carbine. I throw it all over.
You become hysterical.

Speaker 90 I did it four and a half hours. I went bananas.

Speaker 26 Four and a half hours.

Speaker 18 One man against 100.

Speaker 18 Finally, as dawn came, Ted heard the sound of American planes overhead.

Speaker 89 What was left of the enemy scattered.

Speaker 55 The battle was over.

Speaker 6 He was alive.

Speaker 54 But still, nobody was coming for him.

Speaker 20 So he started walking.

Speaker 53 He was shell-shocked, moving like a zombie down the dusty road.

Speaker 57 When he finally reached his company, he told Sergeant A what had happened.

Speaker 55 Sergeant A didn't believe him, but Ted insisted that they go back and look.

Speaker 54 He wanted proof for his commanding officers and for himself.

Speaker 21 What they found was a pile of bodies.

Speaker 5 The far side of the hill was carpeted with dead and dying North Korean soldiers.

Speaker 79 Ted was horrified.

Speaker 77 He cried in a way that he had never cried before, not even when Emery had told him about his parents and his little sister.

Speaker 90 Then I have the guilt feeling. What the hell I did here?

Speaker 90 You know.

Speaker 90 I said

Speaker 90 I kill even the enemy, but I kill somebody's father, brother,

Speaker 90 and all that, you know.

Speaker 55 But here's the irony, right?

Speaker 54 He had become a soldier to save lives.

Speaker 18 His first reaction wasn't relief at having survived an unsurvivable situation.

Speaker 88 It was to see the terrible costs.

Speaker 40 Ted knew what war was, what soldiers did.

Speaker 61 He knew that they weren't just the life-giving G.I.

Speaker 70 Joes who had saved him from death in Mauthausen.

Speaker 52 They killed people, sometimes in a way that felt needless, cruel.

Speaker 5 Up until this moment, Ted had convinced himself that he could get through the war with his moral code intact.

Speaker 69 Now, he had to face what it actually meant to be a soldier, and he had to figure out a way to balance the scales.

Speaker 57 How he did would change not only Ted's life, but the lives of dozens of others.

Speaker 57 The extraordinary story of Ted Rubin continues next week on Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.

Speaker 56 Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Constanza Galardo, and Izzy Carter.

Speaker 76 The show is edited by Ben Nadaf Hafrey, sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski.

Speaker 55 Recording engineering by Nina Lawrence, fact-checking by Arthur Gompert, original music by Eric Phillips.

Speaker 18 Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and the Buffalo Jewish Federation.

Speaker 73 If you want to learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Speaker 66 We'll be sharing photos and videos of the heroes featured on this show.

Speaker 20 We'd also love to hear from you.

Speaker 56 DM us with a story about a courageous veteran in your life.

Speaker 5 If you don't know a veteran, we would love to hear a story of how courage was contagious in your own life.

Speaker 19 You can find us at Pushkin Bods.

Speaker 85 I'm your host, Malcolm Glapo.

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Speaker 2 Ah, smart water. Pure, crisp taste, perfectly refreshing.

Speaker 2 Wow, that's really good water. With electrolytes for taste? It's the kind of water that says, I have my life together.
I'm still pretending the laundry on the chair is part of the decor.

Speaker 2 Yet, here you are, making excellent hydration choices.

Speaker 2 I do feel more sophisticated. That's called having a taste for taste.
Huh. A taste for taste.
I like that. Smartwater.
For those with a taste for taste, grab yours today. This is an iHeart Podcast.