Background
Tibor was born Alfred Goldstein in Konyar, Hungary in 1920.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Alfred Tibor
Edit ProfileCareer
His artwork can be found in nearly 500 private collections and museums throughout the world, including the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem. Denied formal training because of his Jewish faith, he taught himself gymnastics in high school. "The more they were pushing me down and degrading me, the more I wanted to be better than others," he said.
"I wanted to prove it: I am not a dirty Jew.
I am a boy, and I have ambition." Tibor eventually qualified for the Hungarian team for the 1936 Summer Olympics, but when he went to register for the team, he was denied when the team discovered he was Jewish. "I was kicked out. I was kicked out because I was Jewish," Tibor said.
"That time, the sky was falling apart." In 1940 Tibor was forced to be a slave laborer for a Hungarian Army labor battalion. Eventually he was captured by the Soviet Army and spent six years as a prisoner in a Siberian prison camp.
Of the 273 men in his labor battalion sent to the prisoner-of-war camp, he was only one of two to survive.
Tibor credits "luck and determination" for his survival. Tibor was freed from the camp in 1947. Tibor moved to Budapest and worked for nine years as a government exhibition designer.
They emigrated to the United States in 1957, where he worked as a commercial artist in Miami for 16 years until moving to Columbus, Ohio, to pursue sculpture full-time.
On January 25, 2005, a deer burst through Tibor"s living-room window and attacked him, resulting in his hospitalization.
Achievements
Views
Quotations: "The more they were pushing me down and degrading me, the more I wanted to be better than others,". "Art for art’s sake is not enough,".
Membership
Tibor was not allowed to compete as a member of the Hungarian team in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
