Whatever happened to the 13-year-old boy Miklós Horthy “adopted” in 1956?

In 1956 about 200,000 Hungarian refugees fled to the West–among them 20,000 “unaccompanied minors,” mostly teenagers. These kids travelled alone; many of them came from state orphanages. A great number were apprentices who participated in the fights and also peasant and poor children from the countryside.

Lajos Kiss was 13 years old when he escaped from an orphanage at Dorog, a mining town not far from Budapest. He ended up in an Austrian camp in November 1956, and in December he was moved to Portugal with 30 orphan boys. In Portugal Kiss was housed at a children’s home at Oeiras close to the capital Lisbon.

Hungary’s pro-Hitler Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy lived just a couple of miles away, in the city of Estoril. Horthy and his family kept a low profile; he enjoyed the hospitality of António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal authoritarian and the very Catholic ruler who kept himself in power for 36 years as Prime Minister. After World War II Horthy had been arrested by the Americans and under house arrest for years in Germany. No country wanted him, and finally in January 1949 he was able to move to Portugal. Stalin decided that he wouldn’t make a martyr from the old man, let him die in Portugal.

Miklós Horthy

Miklós Horthy

Horthy was 88 when the 1956 revolution broke out in Budapest and he heard about the refugee boys. He visited them to express “his compassionate feelings” towards the Hungarian youth who shared his fate in exile. The visit was a publicity stunt, and he even “adopted” a Hungarian refugee boy, Lajos Kiss.

Horthy's house in Estoril.

Horthy’s house in Estoril.

Kiss moved in with the Horthys, but felt the family cold and rigid for the “poor proletarian boy from Dorog.” When Horthy died two month later the family didn’t want to care for the boy anymore and Kiss was dismissed! He was homeless and later was sent back to Austria to be trained as a car mechanic.

Later in life Kiss moved to the United States and lived in Passaic, New Jersey. Horthy’s „adopted” boy would be 73 years old today. If you know about him, drop us a note.

Our readers would love to know whatever happened to the 13-year-old boy Miklós Horthy adopted in 1956.

György Lázár

N.B.: Béla Nóvé published an excellent study of Hungarian child refugees; I first read about Horthy’s “adoption” story in his work. (Read here.)

 

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