Biography
Lajos Ornstein was born in 1896. Married to Frieda Cziment he lived in Hajdunanas and had four children. After serving in World War I, Lajos founded a bank only to lose his fortune in the 1929 crash. He then became an accountant and tax advisor for a flour mill. However, after anti-Jewish legislation prohibited him from working for non-Jewish firms, he again switched professions and became a secretary to the Jewish community. In 1940 or 1941 Lajos Ornstein was drafted to serve in a Forced Labor Camp, which was then a paramilitary unit. As a former World War I officer decorated with a small silver medal, he donned a military uniform and served as "sub-commander" for a battalion of Jewish forced laborers stationed near Ungvar, near the Carpathian Mountains. After approximately eight to ten months, Lajos was discharged but in 1944 was again inducted, this time as an ordinary Jewish forced laborer, without any rank. He again served in Northern Hungary, until being forced on a death march in late fall, early winter which lasted several weeks. Some fellow prisoners, from his home town, Hajdunanas, jumped off a bridge because they could not march any longer; others simply collapsed from fatigue and were shot. (Lajos kept a small diary recording all the stops of the death march which was later donated to the USHMM).
The group eventually arrived in the Mauthuasen concentrtion camp. From there Lajos went to the Gunskirchen sub-camp where he was liberated in May 1945. Near death, Lajos was so weak from weight loss and over-exertion that he had to be hospitalized for several months. He finally returned to Budapest in August, 1945 and reunited with his oldest son Paul. However he learned that his wife and three younger children had all died. Lajos returned to Hajdunanas in the fall of 1945 and worked as a tax-consultant before leaving Hungary illegally in April 1946 together with his one surviving son and daughter-in-law. On March 19, 1949 he immigrated to Israel.
