Dr. Laszlo Tauber, 87; Holocaust Survivor, Physician, Developer

Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber, a Hungarian-born surgeon who risked his life treating sick and wounded fellow Jews during the Holocaust and later built a thriving surgical practice and made a fortune in the Washington, D.C., real estate market, has died. He was 87.

Tauber, who became the first practicing physician to be named to Forbes magazine’s annual list of the 400 richest Americans, died of congestive heart failure Sunday at his home in Potomac, Md.

Tauber, who arrived in the United States with little more than $700 after the war, later used a small loan to begin buying and developing properties for office, retail, government and apartment buildings in Washington and elsewhere.

He went on to become the federal government’s largest private landlord, with more than 4 million square feet leased to various agencies. A few years ago, estimates of Tauber’s wealth exceeded $1 billion.

For Tauber, real estate meant independence to practice general medicine and surgery as he wished. In addition, he established his own hospital in 1965, the now-closed Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Alexandria, Va., where he served as chairman of the department of surgery and medical director.

“Medicine is still my life,” he told the Washington Post a decade ago. “I spend 5% of my time on real estate and 95% on medicine. That’s the most important to me.”

Giving was also important to Tauber, who donated tens of millions of dollars to medical research, education and Holocaust-related causes. He also was known for serving patients regardless of their ability to pay.

During his first year in the United States after World War II, when his annual income was only $1,600 and he and his wife were living in a decrepit apartment, Tauber gave away the $250 he had managed to save.

“I am a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust,” he wrote in a note to officials at Walter Reed Army Hospital, where many wounded war veterans were still recovering. “As a token of appreciation, my first savings I would like you to give to a soldier of your choice.”

By 1999, Tauber had donated more than $25 million to medical and Holocaust-related causes. That year, he gave $15 million for scholarships to descendants of anyone who had served in the U.S. military during World War II. He also donated $10 million in honor of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews, to organizations that memorialize the Holocaust and to students in Denmark and Sweden.

Tauber was known for his strong sense of loyalty. In America, Israel and Hungary, he sought out scores of Jews and “righteous Gentiles” from his past and supported them with monthly checks. His loyalty, generosity and drive were firmly rooted in Hungary, a past he rarely discussed publicly.

Born in Budapest in 1915, only two months after his father was killed in World War I, Laszlo Nandor Tauber was an exceptional student and gymnast; he won Hungary’s “best sport student” award at 14. He traced his will to win to a meet in 1927, when he was a member of a gymnastics team at the Budapest Jewish High School.

“Everyone was standing, singing the Hungarian national anthem, and people started throwing rotten apples at my team, yelling, ‘Dirty Jews,’ ” Tauber recalled in a 1999 interview with the Post. “I thought to myself: ‘I will train. I will beat them. I will show them.’ ”

He did, becoming a national and European champion in less than two years.

“Am I competitive? Yes, unfortunately so,” he said. “Did I become a happier man? Definitely not. But my experiences made me always stand for the underdog.”

He earned a medical degree from the University of Budapest in 1938. During the war, Tauber’s brother, Imre, died in a Russian forced labor camp, but the lack of doctors in wartime Hungary helped keep him from suffering the same fate.

When the Nazis occupied Hungary in the spring of 1944, Tauber was a resident in general surgery. He began working in what had been called the Jewish Hospital, but which was renamed the International Red Cross Hospital.

After the Nazis began a special operation to liquidate Hungarian Jews in the fall of 1944, he helped transform his former high school into a makeshift hospital, where he frequently performed surgeries on wounded Jewish patients.

Tauber, witnesses later said, often worked day and night and went for long periods without eating or sleeping. When he did sleep, it was on the concrete floor and without blankets. The patients, he said, needed them more than he.

One of the founders of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Tauber was honored in 1995 as an unsung hero of the Holocaust, receiving the Red Cross’ highest award, the Medal of Merit.

After the war, Tauber obtained a fellowship to study neurosurgery in Sweden. In 1947, he and his wife, a German Jew, immigrated to the United States, where Tauber obtained a teaching fellowship in neurosurgery at George Washington University. In 1949, after opening his own practice, he made a $1,500 down payment on his first property, a four-unit apartment house in Washington.

Tauber’s first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Diane; a son, Alfred of Boston; a daughter, Ingrid, and a stepdaughter, Rachael, both of San Francisco; and four grandchildren.