Tibor Sekelj (14 February 1912 – 23 September 1988), also known as Székely Tibor according to Hungarian orthography, was a Hungarian born polyglot, explorer, author, and 'citizen of the world.' In 1986 he was elected a member of the Academy of Esperanto and an honorary member of the World Esperanto Association. Among his novels, travel books and essays, his novella Kumeŭaŭa, la filo de la ĝangalo ("Kumewawa, the son of the jungle"), a children's book about the life of Brazilian Indians, was translated into seventeen languages, and in 1987 it was voted best Children's book in Japan. In 2011 the European Esperanto Union declared 2012 "The Year of Tibor Sekelj" to honor the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Sekelj's father served as a veterinarian in the Austro-Hungarian Army and as a result the family moved around extensively. Several months after Tibor's birth the family moved to Cenei (now in Romania), where Tibor lived until he was ten years old. While Hungarian was his "mother tongue", the commonly spoken language was German. Sekelj had at least two sisters and a brother, Antonije, who later collaborated with him on several books. In 1922, the family settled in Kikinda, part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), where Tibor learned Serbo-Croatian. He also studied French and soon was teaching it to his fellow students. Sekelj went on to learn a new language every four years. In 1926 his family moved to Nikšić (now in Montenegro), where he took up gym, mountaineering and where he walked the entire length of Montenegro.
In 1929 he entered the University of Zagreb (in Croatia) and in 1933 was one of the three youngest students to have graduated from the school of law. During that time Tibor also studied painting, sculpture, Esperanto, filmmaking and journalism. But the practice of law bored him, and he turned his attention to writing. He began working as a journalist in Zagreb. In 1937 he started to work in Zagreb as a film screenwriter. In 1982, in Leuven, Belgium, at the World Youth Esperanto Conference, he discussed his Sephardic Jewish ancestry with Neil Blonstein.
Starting in 1939, Sekelj was a tireless globetrotter, and his travels and expeditions yielded books that have been translated into over twenty languages.
In 1939 he left Zagreb for Argentina to write an article on Croat exiles for a Zagreb newspaper Hrvatski Dnevnik. Sekelj was on the ship Teresa on what might have been that ship's last voyage due to the start of World War II. In 1939 the other ships that normally traveled to South America from Rijeka-Fiume were being used by Italy due to the war in Africa. Setting sail from Rijeka (then Fiume in Italy), he headed for Buenos Aires, with stops in Naples, Genoa (Italy) Santos (Brazil), and Montevideo (Uruguay). Tibor reached Buenos Aires on 19 August 1939. A pacifist by nature, Sekelj had anticipated the outbreak of war and so chose to be far from the fighting. This difficult decision was due not to a lack of personal courage—Sekelj was known to display almost foolhardy bravery throughout his life—but because this Jewish Hungarian/world citizen was simply unwilling to hew to any ideology tied to military purposes.
Within two years he had honed his knowledge of Spanish and got work as a journalist, publishing a monthly magazine dedicated to travel and exploration. Sekelj remained in Argentina for the next 15 years, writing and exploring South America.
1939–1945: Argentina, Aconcagua
In 1944, with no prior mountaineering experience, Sekelj joined a crew on an ascent on Aconcagua, the highest mountain (6,962m) in the South American continent., led by the Swiss German mountaineer Georg Link. Sekelj, the Austrian Zechner and the Italian Bertone reached the summit on 13 February 1944. But tragedy loomed: Four of the six men on that climb perished in a snowstorm. This terrible experience inspired Sekelj to write his first book: Storm Over Aconcagua, which recounts the drama in thrilling detail. On a second climb—initiated by the Argentinian Army, which Tibor led—the corpses of the four young men were found and brought home. As a result, Sekelj added a chapter to the second edition of Tempestad sobre el Aconcagua, 1944 in which he describes that adventure. Then Argentine President Juan Perón personally tried to award Sekelj honorary Argentine Citizenship for his actions, along with the Golden Condor the country's highest medal of honor. Tibor, in his gentle rejection of the offer of citizenship, stated that, while he deeply appreciated the offer, as a Citizen of the World, he could not be bound to any one country.
Based on the success of his first book, Sekelj's publisher urged him to write a second, unrelated one. With a budget of two thousand dollars, Sekelj chose to explore uncharted regions of the Brazilian rainforests in Mato Grosso, otherwise known as the River of Death. In 1946 he undertook first of two expeditions into the Amazon jungle, which produced a popular book, "Along Native Trails" (Por Tierra De Indios). His partner on this arduous journey was an Argentinian of Russian descent Mary Reznik (1914–1996). Together they spent nearly a year exploring tribes along the Araguaia and Rio das Mortes Rivers. Along the way they survived contact with the fearsome Xavantes Indians, who had killed over a hundred people, in many expeditions before them. They also encountered the Karajá and Javae Indians on this expedition. Eventually the book Por Tierra de Indios (1946) chronicling survival in difficult circumstances, amid illness and near-starvation, met with great success, was reprinted repeatedly and translated into many languages. In 1946 Tibor and Mary married. Together they returned to the Amazon in 1948. After that expedition he penned "Where Civilization Ends" (Donde La Civilizacion Termina).
In the summer of 1946, Tibor traveled through Patagonia with three companions : Zechner, Mary and Dr Rosa Scolnik. During the following years he audited classes at the University of Buenos Aires to attend lectures on anthropology, ethnology and archeology, in order to get useful knowledge for his upcoming expeditions.
In 1948 a failed expedition to find the Jivaros led Tibor and Mary to Bolivia, where they met with President Enrique Hertzog. He encouraged them to explore the unknown area of the River Itenez, which abuts with Brazil. During that difficult six-month-long journey they encountered more hardships and hostile Indians, among them the Tupari, a tribe that only a few years before had been practicing cannibals. In April 1949, President Hertzog of Brazil proposed that Sekelj should oversee a territory spanning one hundred thousand hectares, from the planned 4 million hectares meant to house a million European refugees. Sekelj, rather than having to wait for six months for parliament to render a decision, turned down the offer. He later regretted the missed opportunity to have a place where Esperanto could become the common language to its populace.
After attending the World Congress of Esperanto in UK, Tibor spent seven months in Europe. He returned to South America, joining Mary in Venezuela. For the next seventeen months he wrote newspaper articles, while managing a musical instruments store in Maracaibo. After going to Caracas to oversee the creation of a series of historical murals, he began traveling through Central America on his own, as by this time he and Mary and separated. The couple formally divorced in 1955, and soon after Mary went to the United States, where she remarried. Their son, originally named Diego after a son of Christopher Columbus, took her second husband's surname. Daniel Reinaldo Bernstein as of 2011 is a respected acupuncturist and musician living in New York City.
Tibor later wrote about being on the island of San Blas in Panama, where he engaged with the Guna Indians; of an attempt to scale the volcano Izalko in El Salvador, that was cut short by a volcanic eruption; and of discovering the ruins of an ancient city in Honduras, which many people knew from legends only, and that was built by Indians. It was during these treks through Guatemala and Honduras that Sekelj became ever more immersed in archeology and anthropology.