László Lepsényi

László Lepsényi was born on 16 September 1910 in Deva, his father was a police chief. His name was changed from Liebmann at an unknown date. In 1932, he was commissioned as a gunnery lieutenant at the Ludovika Academy. From 1941 to 1944 he was a battery commander at the Artillery Training School in Oradea, in 1943 he completed the assault course in Várpalota, and on 20 September 1944 he was appointed commander of the 40th Artillery Division. Originally a subdivision of the 12th Reserve Division, this unit was first deployed at Oradea, and from November 1944 was directly attached to the Feldherrnhalle Panzer Grenade Division. No information is available on its operations in Budapest. It was taken prisoner of war in February 1945 (at an unspecified date).

He returned from Soviet captivity in the summer of 1947 and rejoined the Hungarian Army in February 1948, holding positions as head of artillery training and as a staff commander until he was arrested by the ÁVH in 1950 as one of the defendants in the trumped-up trial against Lieutenant General László Sólyom and his associates. Sentenced to 10 years on charges of sabotage and conspiracy, he was released in 1955, rehabilitated and reinstated, but was not reinstated in the army.

After his redundancy, he worked first in a garden centre, then as a warehouse packer, and finally managed to find a job as a technical administrator, graduating in 1960 as a building services technician. In 1958, he was stripped of his rank on the grounds that he was a class-general. In 1958 and 1962, he applied for his pension to be revoked and for his pension to be increased to lieutenant colonel, which was finally granted in 1962. He was retired in 1971 but continued to work as an engineer for the General Building Design Company.

It is almost humorous that in a questionnaire he filled in in January 1956, when asked about his medals, he listed the German Iron Cross, Second Class, which he had received in early 1945, with the remark that "it is recognised by HM".

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