Elizabeth Kiss, 64, the 20th President of Union College and the first woman to hold the position, stands in front of the college's Nott Memorial.

Elizabeth Kiss, the daughter of Hungarian political prisoners and freedom fighters, prepares to lead 230-year-old Union College through a fraught moment for higher education.

A brass plaque atop the president’s desk reminds Elizabeth Kiss of the rich history of Schenectady’s Union College.

Union College President Elizabeth Kiss (pronounced quiche) works at a historic desk, which belonged to President Chester Arthur, a Union alumnus. A portrait of Moses Viney, a former enslaved man who became a beloved member of the Union community and caregiver of President Eliphalet Nott, hangs behind Kiss.

SCHENECTADY — One of the only times Elizabeth Kiss saw her father cry was when he told her a story about his imprisonment by the Gestapo in Budapest during the Nazi occupation of World War II.

Her father, Sandor Kiss, a peasant revolutionary and leader of the Hungarian resistance, was lined up in a prison yard with a group of political prisoners and Jews detained by the Nazis.

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Guards were moving down the line, demanding to know each prisoner’s name. Kiss (pronounced “quiche”) was standing next to an older Jewish man he had befriended in prison.

Kiss was a savvy and streetwise operative of the underground, given the nickname “the shaman.” Kiss whispered to the Jewish man that he must lie about his surname, which would mark him as a Jew, and instead adopt a fictitious Hungarian Christian name to dupe the guard.

When the guard reached his place in the line, the Jewish man proudly spoke his given name. Guards beat the Jewish man to death. The memory haunted her father for the rest of his life.

Elizabeth Kiss, 64, recently installed as the 20th........

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