© Edith Kiss

Edith Kiss was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1905 and studied art in Budapest and Dusseldorf, establishing a successful prewar career as a sculptor. In 1944 she was deported to Ravensbrück Women’s concentration camp and later to the Daimler Benz factory 60km from Berlin, where, as a forced labourer, she was among 1,000 women employed in aircraft engine manufacture for the Nazis. Kiss and her friend Agnes Bartha eventually escaped a forced march and went into hiding, later making their way back to Budapest. Edith Kiss went on to marry twice and to live and practice her art in Morocco, London and Paris. She committed suicide in 1966. In 2012 a street in Berlin, Edith Kiss Strasse, was renamed in her honour and a commemorative exhibition of her work was held at the Daimler Benz building.