by Alice Holton

The passing of the years has not erased entirely the memories of years of suffering and privation which Dr. Tibor Rado experienced as a prisoner in Siberia during the first world war. Yet, today, if called up to shoulder a gun in defense of his adopted land, Dr. Rado, a professor of mathematics at Ohio State University, would respond just as quickly he did 25 years ago when he went to the wars for his native Hungary.

In 1911, Rado was a lad of 19, completing his first year in college. Six months after the war began he was drafted and sent into the field as a junior officer.

"At that time the old officers had all been killed off," Dr. Rado explained. The average age of the reserve officers was 20-31 years. The old timers had been caught by the ruthlessness of the machine gun warfare which surprised them as much as the mine warfare is surprising Great Britain today. The situation would be the same if all of the West Point men were killed off and R. 0. T. C. boys sent in to take their places."

Captured by Russians

During the nine months he spent in the field, Dr. Rado took part in two major battles, the offensive by the Russians on the Russian front the Christmas of 1915 and the great Russian offensive of the summer of 1915.

It was while he was on scouting duty in the Carpathian mountains that Dr. Rado was captured by the Russians. Of six officers, he was the only one who wasn't killed. A mere handful of soldiers were left of the 350 captured with him.

"It wasn't surprising that I was captured," Dr. Rado smiled. "I had spent six months traveling back and forth through the Russian lines, picking up information. cutting telephone wires and holding up supply trains. Then, one day, I was surrounded by Russians -- I wasn't surprised."

In Siberian Camp

The prisoners were taken through the Ukraine and Moscow and across the Ural mountains to Tobolsk, Siberia, where they were placed in a prison camp. The common soldiers were given jobs as laborers but the officers had an easier time of it.

"I was given a salary of $25 per month. By reciprocal agreements between the warring nations, a captured officer received that amount. Now, $25 meant 50 rubles -- and what those rubles would buy! A fat goose could be purchased for five cents. Food was so plentiful that every man at the mess table had a half goose to eat for dinner each Sunday. Yes, there was plenty to eat in the beginning," continued the mathematician.

Revolution Brings Scarcity

It was the coming of the Red revolution in 1917, Dr. Rado explained that caused a change in the fortunes of the war prisoners. When Bolsheviks took over, no more salaries were paid to officers. After a year of relative plenty, food became scarce and the prisoners experienced starvation.

"We were kicked over thousands of miles in old freight cars to get us out of the fighting zone. Our ranks were decimated by disease, starvation and the 40 and 50 below zero temperatures. Finally, four of us, all officers and all one time college students, traded names with four private soldiers and took laboring jobs. We were, from that time on, officially dead, so far as our families knew. Our records were completely lost," Dr. Rado continued.

Worked at Hard Labor

For more than a year. he explained, he worked as a lumberjack, he worked on railroad trains, in railroad yards, loading freight. Then fate stepped in with one more surprise for the man who hadn't suffered enough, During the Christmas holidays of 1919, Dr. Rado contracted spotted typhus fever, a disease which is practically deadly to Europeans but which effects the Russians much as an attack of flu bothers Americans.

"I went down to 90 pounds but I recovered," laughed Dr. Rado. My recovery was helped along by an American missionary Earl Woodbury, who made me his secretary, During the four months I was with him, he made me drink quarts and quarts of condensed milk and in four months I gained back all of the weight I had lost."

An American-financed boat finally took Dr. Rado and many other war prisoners back to Hungary. Because he had utilized many hours while a prisoner in the study of mathematics, he decided to give up the study of civil engineering in which he had completed a year in college. So when Dr. Rado enrolled at the University of Szeged, it was as a mathematics major.

The years since 1919 have been more kind to Dr. Rado than were the previous ones. He received his doctor's degree at Szeged, taught there for nine years, was married to a fellow teacher in 1924 and became the father of a daughter, Judith, now 14, and a son, Tibor, Jr., now 12 years old. In 1928 Dr. Rado was awarded the International Research Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. He spent six months in Munich, Germany, on the fellowship which he resigned to become a lecturer at Harvard University. He also served as a visiting lecturer at Rice Institute in Houston, Tex., before being offered a professorship in mathematics at Ohio State in 1929.

Dr. Rado and his family, who live at 92 Walhalla Road, are now American citizens and proud of the fact. In Dr. Rado's statements an the current war, that fact was evident.

"I believe that we should keep our houses in order and our rifles loaded," he emphasized. "Each and every one of us should consider solely the interests of our country. But we have a stake which may be coveted by other nations in the world. Let us not worry about what happens to England or to Germany -- until what happens to them affects us. When that day comes, I say, let's fight!"

Department of Mathematics