Tivadar Soros (originally Schwartz) was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Nyírbakta, Hungary, near the border with Ukraine, where he experienced a modest upbringing; his father owned a general store selling farm equipment. At age eight, the family relocated to Nyíregyháza, the regional center in northeastern Hungary. He was a Hungarian lawyer, jurist, and physician who established a successful legal practice in Budapest during the interwar period, building a network of influential connections. During World War I, he served as a prisoner of war, where he learned Esperanto, later becoming a prominent Esperantist author and advocate for the language. After escaping Siberian imprisonment, he returned to Hungary. Tivadar married Erzsébet, and they had two sons: Pál (born 1926, later Paul Soros, an engineer) and György (born 1930, later George Soros). During World War II, amid Nazi occupation, he ingeniously protected his family by assuming false identities and securing false papers, a story detailed in his memoir 'Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-occupied Hungary.' In 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution, he and his wife fled to the United States, settling in New York where he lived until his death. His experiences as a lawyer, Esperanto author, and survivor of two world wars shaped his resilient worldview, influencing his famous sons.