Fifty-five years after graduating with a degree in chemical engineering, Class of 1961 Aggie Thomas Gabor will return to campus to talk about his journey to A&M; a journey which included surviving the Holocaust and later a communist regime.
The event, hosted by the Texas A&M Hillel Center, will feature Hungarian native Gabor. He will speak about his experiences growing up in his native land, surviving the Holocaust only to live under communist rule after the war before fleeing to pursue an education in the United States.
The talk will focus primarily on his early years of adversity, according to Gabor.
“I am going to talk about how I got to A&M,” Gabor said. “And then I am going to talk about my Holocaust years — that’s the main subject. I’m going to talk a little bit about my growing up under the communist regime. I was a kid, I’m a child survivor. I was in the Budapest ghetto when I was at the age of 10. And then I grew up in the communist regime until I escaped and came here.”
Rabbi Matt Rosenberg of the A&M Hillel Center said they will welcome Gabor to College Station with a tour of the city and campus, since this will be his first visit in more than five decades.
“He’s probably the only Holocaust survivor who is an Aggie, he’s the only one I know of,” Rosenberg said. “[He] ended up getting a degree in chemical engineering in 1961 as a non-reg. He’s coming into town for the first time since 1961, so 55 years. He’s flying in on Monday afternoon; we’re going to have a campus tour on Tuesday. So it’ll be a whole big reunion for him.”
Gabor’s interesting path to A&M even garnered public attention when he first came to the United States, Rosenberg said.
“I’m looking forward to hearing his full story on how he got here,” Rosenberg said. “But at the time he was written up in Houston and Dallas newspapers because he was unusual in that he was coming from behind the Iron Curtain. This is the Cold War, in the late 50’s, and the area he was coming from was communist Hungary, and he was at A&M. So it was highly unusual.”
Joshua Williams, kinesiology sophomore, had the opportunity to meet Gabor when he was in highschool. Williams said that was the defining moment which led him to attend A&M.
“When I was a junior in high school, I went on a trip called ‘March of the Living,’ which is a trip for Jewish teenagers across the world to go visit Poland and Israel,” Williams said. “I met him in Poland, and … he told me about A&M and how A&M helped him out, how Hillel back then helped him in learning English. They loaned him money, and they helped him with his English to help him with his degree. So he told me his story, but he also told me how A&M helped him out, and that’s when I checked out A&M myself.”
The event is free to the public and will be held at 7 p.m. on Wednesday in Rudder Theatre.