19 March 2002
Yad Vashem has officially announced the establishment, by Professor Laszlo N. Tauber, of the “Fund for Research of the Holocaust in Hungary and Hungarian Jewish History”. The fund’s establishment, at Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research, comes on the anniversary of the March 19th 1944 entry of German troops into Hungary.
Professor Tauber, a well-known Washington surgeon and philanthropist, established the fund in honor of his daughter Dr. Ingrid Tauber whose doctorate was on the subject of second and third generation Holocaust survivors. One of the aims of the fund is the promotion of research on the role of Jews who saved Jews in Hungary during the Holocaust.
After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 Professor Tauber was mobilized for slave labor, despite being a doctor. However he managed to escape and find work in the Jewish hospital in Budapest, continuing to operate on his patients in unsanitary conditions, and without electricity during fierce daily bombings. With forged International Red Cross documents, and despite the risk of being shot, Tauber traveled to deportation assembly points, picked up Jews, and escorted them to the hospital.
As a result of the actions of Professor Laszlo Tauber many Jews in Budapest were saved.
