The Kallos Family Book 2022

34 • THE KALLOS FAMILY
Surviving siblings Barbara and Laci Kallos,
photographed in 1947 at Ústí nad Labem, an
industrial town in Sudetenland. Laci, now 19
years old, still looks thin after his camp ordeal.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY BARBARA KALLOS.
In late February 1948 the Soviet communists
took over all of Czechoslovakia, which
meant that the Kallos family was again living
under that regime. They wanted to move to the
beautiful spa town of Karlovy Vary, also in the
Sudetenland, but needed a permit due to the
communists’ stringent requirements. The local
council official of Ústí nad Labem demanded Biri
kiss him in exchange for granting the permit.
It was in Karlovy Vary that Biri met Alex
Lorber. Originally from Slovakia, Alex was
the only member of his immediate family to
survive. His mother committed suicide at the
start of the war and his father and younger sister
were murdered in a Nazi concentration camp.
Barbara and Alex Lorber after their civil
marriage at Karlovy Vary Town Hall on Saturday,
15 January 1949. The man in the background is
Mr Steiner, a witness to the marriage.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY BARBARA KALLOS.
Alex and his younger brother Arthur fought with
the partisans but Arthur was killed in the woods
by a German sniper. Later Alex was wounded in
the face and spent a few weeks postwar recovering
in the Tatras. In January 1949, Biri and Alex
married in Karlovy Vary, where Alex owned a
successful men’s and women’s clothing shop
called Alex Lorber. The clothing was made in
Moravia. The couple emigrated to Netanya,
Israel, in June 1949, a little over a year after the
communist coup and a year after the establishment
of the state of Israel (14 May 1948). In Israel,
they owned Café Atara, and had two daughters,
Tikva-Sarah (Tiki) in 1951 and Hagit in 1963.
Lili, Laci and Ilonka also emigrated to Netanya.