László Kiss

Born: Unknown 1928, Székesfehérvár, Hungary

László, along with his family –  parents, sister and twin brother - had a happy childhood in Seregélyes, a village near the town of Székesfehérvár. His father also had a twin brother, and both of them worked as tailors at the workshop in the large family home they shared.

In 1939, László and his twin brother Bandi were refused from the high school in Székesfehérvár due to anti-Jewish legislation and they had to go to the civil middle school in Enying. In 1943, Bandi returned to Seregélyes to learn to be a carpenter, while after a special exam, László continued his studies at the Berzsenyi High School in Budapest. The school-year ended after March 19, 1944 and the school reports were handed out on April 5. Jews were required to wear yellow stars were forbidden to travel. With difficulty, László finally managed to obtain permission to travel back home to Seregélyes on April 22. His father and his father’s twin brother were taken away and forced into slave labor. They both died, weakened, in a camp in Austria. The Jewish population of Seregélyes was deported on June 5 and arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on June 17.  László and his twin brother were selected to go to the twin camp, where they were experimented on by the infamous Mengele and his colleagues.

On January 18, 1945 the camp inmates were forced on a death march towards the west. On January 20, while trying to escape from a mass execution in a forest area, Bandi was killed. László and another inmate went into hiding until a few days after the Soviet liberating troops arrived. László got back to Budapest on April 15, 1945 as the only survivor of his family.