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Alexander (Alex) John Ambrus
9th August 1919 – 19th May 2004 Aged 84
We are gathered here today to mourn the death or celebrate the life of Alex Ambrus, also known as Alex Ambrose, or just plain Alex.
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Alex was born in Zebegeny Hungary on 9th August 1919, the son of Sandor and Eleanora Ambrus. From 1937 –1941 he attended the University of Budapest where he gained his diploma in Civil Engineering. Whilst at University Alex studied Art at the Budapest Art school. Art was to be one of his life long pleasures and his work was well known in the Molong district where he had a number of exhibitions.
About 1940 Alex was drafted into the Hungarian army, which at that time was controlled by the Germans. By 1943 the Russians had advanced into Hungary where Alex was captured. I’m sure he told me that he was a tank commander and that his unit was one of the last to be taken. As a prisoner he was taken to Russia to work in the labour camps, where he and a group of other prisoners were taken to a forest, given axes and basic saw milling equipment and told to build a village. He told me that they had to build a structure that could house grain, and that when they built it they drilled a small hole on the bottom, which they could stop with a cork.. Through this hole they could get some grain for their own sustenance and for the villagers, who treated them well and who were starving. This was in Stalinist Russia, where they could be executed if caught stealing from the State.
In 1948 the Russians released Alex, and he returned to Hungary, where he married his first wife and they had a son named Sandor. At that time Hungary had fallen under the yoke of the Soviet Empire, and Alex being vehemently patriotic and anti-communist, joined the Hungarian underground around 1951.
In 1953 Alex was captured with his nephew and both of them were condemned to death. His nephew was shot but Alex was spared it seems because he was an engineer and was of some use to the State. Though Alex escaped execution, he did not escape torture. He bore till the day he died the scars of cigarette burns all over his arms and other parts of his body, and also during that time his teeth were knocked out by a rifle butt.
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