Teodoro Ŝvarc (1893–1968)

Teodoro Żvarc was the pen name of Tivadar Schwartz, later Theodor Soros, born to a Jewish family in Baktalórántháza, Hungary. His father had a general store and sold farm equipment. When Theodor was eight years old, his father moved the family to Nyiregyhaza, the regional center in the northeast, providing a less isolated life. He first met his future wife Elizabeth (Erzebet) Szucs when she was 11 years old. He studied at the University of Cluj and became a lawyer, author, and editor. He fought with the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I and spent several years in a prisoner of war camp in Siberia before escaping. He returned to Hungary in 1920, and in 1922, co-founded with friends the Esperanto literary magazine Literatura Mondo (Literary World), having learned the language from a fellow soldier. Using Esperanto, he wrote the short novel Modernaj Robinzonoj (Modern Robinsons, 1923), later translated into several other languages. He and Elizabeth married in 1924. They changed their family's surname from Schwartz to Soros in 1936, in response to growing anti-Semitism in Hungary with the rise of Fascism. His book Maskerado ĉirkaŭ la morto (Masquerade: Dancing Around Death), first published in 1965, was an autobiographical novel about their experiences during the Nazi Occupation of Budapest in World War II. In 2001, it was re-published in English under the title Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-Occupied Hungary. After the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Soros and his family emigrated to the USA and settled in New York City. His sons are billionaire financier George Soros and engineer Paul Soros. He became an American citizen in 1963.