SOMERTON MAN: TIBOR KALDOR, A RED CROSS LINK

At the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, the Australian Red Cross mobilised. With a huge range of services to offer, the number of volunteers rapidly grew until, by 1944, its membership reached a staggering 450,000.

Where is the link for Tibor Kaldor and the Red Cross? In his final letter, he made specific mention of the organisation to the effect that he asked that any of his belongings should be donated to the Red Cross which was one amongst many such organisations operating in Australia during and after the war years The question is, why the Red Cross?

Apart from the better-known aspects of the services offered by the Red Cross as in food parcels, for example.

They handled donations of used clothing and, interestingly, they also had tutors in quite a range of subjects including languages with German to English and Russian to English, from what I know to this point, volunteers were found amongst ex-internees and also amongst the general population. Those who have been following this blog especially the life of Tibor Kaldor, will recall that the internment camps at Hay and Tatura actually had their own 'Universities' and no shortage of tutors to cover a wide range of subjects including maths, languages and even nuclear physics.

It is possible that Tibor was amongst the Red Cross Volunteers as a Tutor of languages and that in that position, he would have met other tutors perhaps even in the Russian to English field.

We are still following this line and hope to have more information in the coming weeks.