US Army Honorable Service lapel button awarded to a Czech Jewish refugee

Lapel button issued to Tom T. Kovary for service in the United States Army, from 1943-1946, during World War II. On September 2, 1939, nineteen year old Tibor Kovari and his twenty year old brother, Erno, were attacked on the street for being Jewish by Nazi sympathizers in their hometown, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. They fought back, put their attackers in the hospital, and were arrested, along with their father, Olivio. The incident received such widespread publicity that the authorities advised them to flee for fear of retaliation. They illegally crossed the border into Hungary, where they obtained visas for the US, arriving in New York on February 29, 1940. Both brothers joined the US Army: Tom was in Military Intelligence stateside; Ernest in combat, landing with the infantry on D-Day. He searched for surviving relatives, but found only one cousin, a survivor of Auschwitz death camp.