Laszlo Tauber

Overcoming Adversity

Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber (February 18, 1915 – July 28, 2002) was a Hungarian-born surgeon who saved other Jews in the Budapest ghetto during World War II, then made a real estate fortune in Washington, D.C. and became a major philanthropist to medical research and Jewish causes. Dr. Tauber was the medical director and chairman of the department of surgery at Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, a hospital he founded. He was a brilliant Hungarian student and champion gymnast in his youth whose life story was "right out of the pages of Horatio Alger." Immediately after becoming a physician at the outset of World War II, the young Dr. Tauber found himself drafted to be chief of surgery at the hospital serving the Jewish community of Budapest. He remained there throughout the war, rescuing many Jews not only with medical attention but as well with forged papers that forestalled their deportation. Some 6000,000 Hungarian Jews were ultimately rounded up and sent to Nazi concentration camps in the last years of the war. Dr. Tauber escaped that fate, apparently because his hospital belonged to the Red Cross, which after the war gave him its highest distinguished service award. When the war ended, Tauber came to the United States in 1947 "without a penny" but with eight years of surgical training at Hungarian hospitals. He passed the U.S. medical exams in 1948 and accepted a fellowship at George Washington University which him paid only $116 a month, forcing him to take out loans and moonlight at a nearby hospital every evening, working until midnight. Dr. Tauber soon established a general practice in a middle-class suburban neighborhood and then spent his evenings and weekends building a real estate empire valued at close to $1 billion. He began by building small apartment buildings but over time specialized in constructing office buildings, which he leased to the rapidly growing federal government. Dr. Tauber became one of the largest landlords of the United States government, and the wealthiest doctor in America. Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber participated in the 1985 Achievement Summit in Denver, Colorado and spoke to the student delegates about his life and overcoming adversity.