Engineer Studied Mathematics To Pass Time.

by Gwendolyn Riggle

IF Prof. Tibor Rado had not spent four years as a prisoner in a concentration camp in Russia, he probably would not be teaching mathematics st Ohio State university today!

Professor Rado had been studying civil engineering at the University of Szeged in his native Hungary, in the days preceding the first world war, when, in 1915, he was drafted into the Hungarian army. After receiving military training for eight months, he was commissioned a second lieutenant and sent to the Russian front.

In August, 1916, the 21-year. old officer was captured in the Carpathian mountains and taken to a concentration camp in Siberia.

ALL captive officers, regardless of rank, received 50 roubles a month, amounting to about $25. With this $25, however, they had to pay for every bit of food they ate, pay rent, and ironically enough pay for the very guards that kept watch on them.

Paying for food wasn't such a hardship the first year or so. Siberia was still untouched by the war and food was incredibly cheap. Professor Rado recalls having his choice of a big fat goose or three rabbits for a nickel.

All the soldiers were severely guarded and allowed no freedom whatsoever, so Professor Rado obtained some books to while away the hours. Quite by accident these books all happened to be on the same subject, mathematics. Professor Rado got started working with figures and never went back to engineering.

Describes Narrow Escapes During World War.

JUST when the Hungarian soldiers had accustomed themselves to life in the concentration camp, the Russian revolution got underway, and the Russian czar and his family were moved to the same city in which the camp was located.

The Bolsheviks thought it necessary to move the prisoners to another city, and Professor Rado remembers that trip, 5000 miles jammed in a freight car, as one of his most harrowing experiences.

Russia went to pieces during this period. There was no central control. "The Bolsheviks and the White Guards killed everybody they could lay their hands on," as Professor Rado expressed. Money lost all value. Prices were fabulous. A box of matches cost a pound of thousand dollar notes.

IN THE midst of all this turmoil were 2000 captive officers who wanted to return to their homes because Russia no longer at war.

Escape from a camp, then as now, was almost unheard of. Lieut. Rado and his fellow officers brought escape about in a manner that would do credit to a movie scenario.

Those among them with influence borrowed money, bribed Russian officials, and bought a complete railroad train in which to effect their escape. At each railroad station they had to bribe every official in order to continue on their way.

After traveling 5000 miles, these homesick men had freedom and their native land almost in sight, when word came from the Hungarian ambassador in Moscow that Hungary could not admit them at this time and for them to remain where they were.

BY THIS time Russia did not want these 200 men in her boundaries either. Her cities were crowded with refugees and food was becoming increasingly scarce.

The officers were pushed farther and farther backward over the same route they had just traveled. Hungary would not admit them, Russian cities would not keep them. Winter, bitter and cold as only a Russian winter can be, was at hand. Rado and his fellow men were penniless. They could buy no firewood and very little food. Epidemics broke out. Hundreds died.

Rather than wait for death, early in 1919, Professor Rado and one of his friends attempted to escape over the Russian boundary line. They were caught. Rado was sentenced to be shot but a young Russian officer saved him from the firing squad.

STILL a prisoner, however, Professor Rado was sent back east and again confined in a concentration camp. Captive officers were not required, to work, but the only prisoners who received food were the private soldiers who did have to work, so Rado traded names with a sick private soldier and worked. By that time there was no authority in Russia, so those prisoners out working could go where they pleased.

Once more Rado was ready to try to make his way home -- but he contacted typhus fever, a deadly disease.

Professor Rado considers that almost dying of fever was a lucky break for him. A Y.M.C.A. missionary, visiting him during his sickness, hired him as a secretary and took him out of Russia into Manchoukuo, China.

After four months there, he learned that Americans were, chartering boats to get prisoners home from Sibera, and he obtained passage on one of these.

Several thousand men were crowded on a miserably small boat for 52 days -- but at last they were going home.

Dramatically. Professor Rado arrived in his parents' home on Christmas day, 1920.

ACCORDING to all tradition, the story should end in this happy reunion, but such is not the case.

Rado found Hungary in a state of collapse. Three-fourths of her population had been taken away by the Versailles treaty.

From 192O to 1929, Professor Rado got his master's degree and taught mathematics at the university, and on several leaves of absences made a number of trips through Germany studying conditions there.

In 1929 he received invitations from Harvard university and the Rice Institute at Houston, Tex., to come to America as a visiting lecturer. While in the United States on these missions he lectured at various other places, including Ohio State. He accepted his present position at the university in October, 1930.

PROFESSOR RADO and his wife, who has a doctor's degree in chemistry, have been American citizens for five years now. They live at 92 Walhalla Road and think that Columbus, Ohio, United States of America, is indeed a wonderful place in which to live.

There are two children in the Rado family, Judith, aged 15, who attends North High School, and Ted, which is the English version of his father's name "Tibor," age 12, who goes to Crestview.

And from the head of the family who has spent most of his 46 years in war-torn countries, and seen Nazi groups yelling in mad frenzy, "Heil Hitler," come these reassuring words:

"America need have no fear of a dictatorship so long as her citizens are proud and face the future with hope. Dictatorship does not come from the desire of one man, it comes from a people who have lost all hope."

Department of Mathematics