Paul Soros

Paul Soros (Hungarian: Soros Pál; June 5, 1926 – June 15, 2013) was a Hungarian-born American mechanical engineer, inventor, businessman and philanthropist. Soros founded Soros Associates, which designs and develops bulk handling and port facilities. Soros Associates currently operates in ninety-one countries worldwide, as of 2013. Paul Soros was the older brother of George Soros, a successful businessman and financier.

Soros was born Paul Schwartz on June 5, 1926, in Budapest, Hungary, to Tivadar Soros, a lawyer and author, and Erzsébet Szűcs, the daughter of the owner of a fabric store. His father had been captured by the Russians during World War I and held in a detention camp in Siberia.

Tivadar Soros, changed the family's surname from Schwartz to Soros in 1936 to escape Antisemitism and the expansion of Nazism in Europe. Tivadar Soros forged paperwork, giving the family alias and Christian names, as the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944. The family fled to safe houses to nearly a year, until Soviet forces invaded the country. However, the Soviets mistakenly believed that Paul Soros was a wanted SS officer and arrested him. He was marched east, towards the Soviet Union with other prisoners. He managed to escape the prisoner march by ducking behind a bridge and hiding in an abandoned farm house. He then walked back to Budapest.

Paul Soros survived the war and emigrated to the United States in 1948. He arrived in Manhattan after defecting from Hungary, then under Communist control, while traveling in Switzerland with the Hungarian Olympic ski team.

Soros arrived in New York City with very little money. He enrolled at Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (present-day Polytechnic Institute of New York University), where he earned his master's degree, as he could not afford the higher priced Ivy League universities. He resided in a cheap apartment near Prospect Park as a student, but still struggled to pay for rent and food.

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