András Toma (5 December 1925 – 30 March 2004) was a Hungarian soldier taken prisoner by the Red Army in 1944, then discovered living in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000.

[1] Because Toma never learned Russian and nobody at the hospital spoke Hungarian, he had apparently not had a single conversation in over 50 years, a situation of great interest for the fields of psychiatry and psycholinguistics.

[5] Later that year, while fighting near Auschwitz, Toma was captured by Soviet forces, and was transported to a prisoner of war camp east of Leningrad.

[5] Toma lived in the hospital for the next 53 years under the name András Tamás, where he was unable to communicate with others due to his inability to speak Russian.

[6][3] Since he was never discharged, Toma was promoted to sergeant major by the Minister of Defense, and since his military service had been continuous, his decades of accumulated unpaid salary were paid in full.