Kamenec was born into a Jewish family in Nitra on 27 August 1938 and grew up in Janova Ves [cs; sk].

[1] His father, a civil engineer, managed to secure an economic exception to the 1942 deportations, during which most Slovak Jews were sent to the extermination camps.

Kamenec avoided the resumption in anti-Jewish persecution during and after the Slovak National Uprising by hiding with his family in a bunker from September 1944 to April 1945, when Slovakia was liberated by the Red Army.

He is a chairman of Slovak section of common Czech-Slovak Commission of Historians[2] and a member of the board of directors of Holocaust Documentation Center.

[8] Kamenec was awarded the Order of Ľudovít Štúr, 1st Class, by the president of Slovakia in January 2017 for his contributions to the academic discipline of history and the promotion of human rights and democracy.