Bartholomew Kubat
Bartholomew Kubat (March 08, 1917 - August 23, 2003) was a surgeon, Holocaust survivor, refugee from communist Czechoslovakia.
Early life
Bartholomew Kubat was born Berl Klein to the Jewish watchmaker Simon Klein and his wife FRIDA, in the town of Berehovo (Hung: Beregszász) in Ruthenia. At the time of his birth, Ruthenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but became part of Czechoslovakia in 1919. He was one of six children who survived childhood (three others died in infancy). During his youth, he attended the Berehovo gymnasium, graduating with top honors in 1935. He was also a prominent member of the Berehovo football (soccer) club. While in school, he helped augment the struggling family's income by tutoring. In 1935, he moved to Prague to study medicine at the German-language faculty of the Charles University in Prague, completing his third year of studies and the first rigorosum examination by the time of the 1938 Munich Agreement. As a Jew, he was not allowed to continue his studies and returned home to Berehovo, where he worked as a jeweler's apprentice and helped out in the family business.
When Czechoslovakia ceased to exist on March 15, 1939, Ruthenia was annexed by Hungary, then an ally of [...] Germany. Like the rest of the Hungarian Jewry, the Kleins were gradually deprived of their rights, citizenship and property under Hungary's anti-Semitic laws. Berl and his three brothers were ultimately drafted into the Hungarian Army's slave labor battalions (munkaszolgálatos)1.
Kubat survived the four years of forced labor, which included, among others, building railroad tunnels through the Carpathian Mountains and laying wide-gauge railroads (see Rail_gauge) to improve transportation links between [...] Germany and the USSR. When Hungary sought an armistice with the Allies in March 1944, the country was occupied by German troops and Kubat's labor unit, which happened to be in Hungary proper, was ultimately demobilized. He returned to Ruthenia and rejoined his family, which had been moved into the Mukacevo (Hung: Munkács) ghetto in March 1944.
With the Germans came Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Final Solution. In May 1944, the ghettos were systematically emptied, with inmates being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau for extermination 2. Kubat's family was transported in early June 1944, and the Ruthenian ghettos were largely shut down by the end of that month. Kubat was the only one of his remaining family to survive the selection process in Auschwitz. He was evacuated from Auschwitz after about a month and moved to Mauthausen, Lieberose before escaping from a transport while en route Sachsenhausen in April 1945. At the end of the war, he was repatriated to Czechoslovakia and reunited with his brother Menhart, a senior lieutenant in the Czechoslovak military units on Eastern front,3 who was the only other survivor from the Klein family. The brothers jointly made the decision to change their family name from the German-sounding Klein to the Czech Kubat.
After recuperating from his wartime ordeals, Kubat returned to his medical studies, being awarded the MUDr (medicinae universiae doctor) (U.S.: MD) degree in 1948. His training took him to hospitals in several Czech cities, including Jindřichův Hradec where he met his future wife. He was ultimately posted to the Bulovka Teaching Hospital (Fakultní nemocnice na Bulovce)4 in Prague, where he worked as senior surgeon until 1965, in cooperation with other Czechoslovak Holocaust survivors like the pediatrician Berthold Epstein and war veterans like Josef Hercz5.
Middle and late life
In 1965, Kubat led his family on an adventurous escape from Communist Czechoslovakia, following seventeen years of tense life as a non-Communist - and a Jew - in a Communist country. After a four-month sojourn in Vienna, Austria, the Kubat family emigrated to the United States where they started a new life, first in New York City and then in Tacoma, Washington. To be able to return to practicing medicine, Kubat first had to pass the ECFMG examination, then work as an intern in a hospital, and then take the state board of medicine examinations. He opened his private practice in Tacoma in 1968 and practiced medicine until 1985, when he retired. He and his wife ultimately moved back to New York City to be closer to family. Kubat died in August 2004 after a prolonged illness.