Dezső Kanizsai

"[2] After the war Kaniszai returned to academic and teaching duties and authored the definitive Hungarian-language textbooks on education for the deaf.

On the eve of the German occupation it provided shelter and training to forty-five deaf and twelve blind children.

[6] Memoirist Izrael Deutsch (Harry Dunai), who was admitted to the school in 1939 at the age of five, described Kaniszai of that period: "A tall man with a hefty, well-developed body and a few red streaks running through his pure white hair.

"[7] "He was easy to spot with his tall large frame, hazel eyes, red-streaked white hair and very fair skin.

He always wore the same three-piece suit with a white striped shirt and a necktie... he could speak, read and write English and German and held a doctorate degree.

In the ten months between March 1944 and January 1945 the Germans and Hungarian Arrow Cross nationalists murdered more than half a million Jews,[3] but the close-knit community of deaf teenagers persisted.

[13] Before the end of the war, the former building of the School for the Deaf was taken over by Raoul Wallenberg's mission of the International Red Cross and once again became the shelter for the Jews of Budapest.

[13] After the war Kanizsai returned to his profession and brought the surviving students back to his class with the support of the Red Cross and the Joint Distribution Committee.