Born:
Berehovo, Czechoslovakia
(also Beregszász, Hungary)
August 13, 1925
Died:
August 7, 2015
Tibor Beerman was born into a Hungarian-Jewish family in the town of Berehovo, Czechoslovakia in 1925. Before World War I (1914-1918) the town belonged to Hungary and Beerman’s father and uncle fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After the war, Tibor’s father returned to the town (known as Beregszász in Hungarian) where he opened a small iron foundry and operated two regional bus lines.
As children, Beerman and his older brother attended synagogue regularly, especially under the care and supervision of their religious Orthodox grandfather. At home the family spoke Hungarian, but Tibor also grew up hearing the Jewish language of Yiddish and local Ruthenian dialect. He attended both Czech- and Hungarian-language schools.
Beerman remembered little antisemitism or anti-Jewish prejudice in his early childhood. However, the situation changed as he entered high school and the Hungarian government aligned itself with Nazi Germany. Tibor was around 13 years old when Nazi Germany awarded Beregszász and the surrounding area back to Hungary in 1938. Proving its loyalty to the Nazis, Hungary passed antisemitic legislation revoking Jews’ equal citizenship and barring them from working in government. Beerman’s father lost his businesses and Jewish men were conscripted into forced labor battalions.
German troops invaded Hungary in March 1944. Tibor remembered seeing “elite German SS in impeccable uniforms marching up and down the main street.” Nazi authorities immediately enacted plans to deport all the Jews of Hungary to the killing centers. Beerman and his family were rounded up and forced into a temporary shelter at a local brick factory. Two or three weeks later, in May 1944 they were boarded onto trains bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau.
His mother was separated from the rest of the family and Tibor was tattooed with the number A9813. Beerman, his brother and father labored among the “acrid smoke” from the crematoria. After a few weeks, the three were transferred to the Babitz camp where they were regularly whipped and beaten by the SS men overseeing their farm labor. Later in the year, around September, Tibor was separated from his father and brother and sent back to Auschwitz. He survived a death march and continued forced labor before U.S. soldiers liberated him at Ebensee on May 6, 1945.
Beerman spent several weeks recovering from starvation, gangrene, scabies, tuberculosis and pleurisy. He returned to his hometown of Beregszász where he found his father waiting at the train station hoping for news of his family. Tragically, the two found out that Tibor’s brother had died at Buchenwald a few days after American troops liberated the camp.
After the war, Beregszász became part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and Beerman went to Prague to study architectural engineering. While there, Tibor’s father discovered his mother was at a hospital in northern Germany where she was recovering from shrapnel wounds.
Beerman and his father joined his mother in the German town of Eutin and Tibor later began working for the American Joint Distribution Committee at a displaced persons camp in Frankfurt. He was selected for a scholarship to attend the University of Texas at Austin and immigrated to the U.S. to start classes in 1947. Beerman’s parents joined him in Texas two years later. In 1951, Tibor graduated with a degree in architecture and began working at a firm in Galveston. He married Henrietta Frances Altgilt and the couple raised two daughters, Sylvia and Lillian.
After retirement, Beerman used computer-aided design software to create a digital model of Auschwitz-Birkenau. He later wrote a book about his experiences during the Holocaust. Tibor died in 2015 a few days before his 90th birthday.
Parents:
József Beerman, survived
Jolán Herskovits Beerman, survived
Siblings:
Gábor (Simon), d. Buchenwald, April 1945