DREAMS AND TEARS Chronicle of a Life
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by Erwin K. Koranyi
ISBN#1-897113-47-1
ISBN#9781897113479
Erwin Koranyi portrays a world destined for and caught in the chaos and senselessness of war--Budapest from the 1920s to the 1940s. His childhood hope of becoming a physician appeared to be a futile notion in a milieu of moderate anti-Semitism relentlessly bourgeoning into a murderous regime.
Almost 600,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in less than one year. Survival became an hour-to-hour lottery. A fortunate turn of events brought Koranyi in contact with Raul Wallenberg, special envoy of the Swedish Embassy, who saved him from certain destruction. Thereafter, Koranyi found himself under the thumb of yet another dictatorship.
But Koranyi was not to be denied his childhood dream: he found a way to study medicine. After an adventurous escape through the Iron Curtain, he wandered about in many places before he settled in Canada, where he finally began to practise medicine and teach psychiatry.
About the Author
Dr. Erwin K. Koranyi, a practicing psychiatrist in Ottawa, is the author of three technical books and has contributed eleven chapters in different textbooks and over fifty scientific papers in refereed journals. Dr. Koranyi is professor emeritus (psychiatry) at the University of Ottawa.
As a Jewish boy in the dark world of growing Nazism in Hungary, he vainly dreamt to become a physician. Instead, his life became a precarious daily struggle and continuous mortal risk as he endured Nazi persecution and helped his beloved ones to survive. They lived through the Holocaust in part with the help of the heroic Swedish diplomat, Raul Wallenberg. Koranyi and his family endured untold losses during the persecution until they were liberated from the Nazis by yet another Evil Empire.
More adventures and adversities coloured his medical studies in Hungary, and after dangerous border crossings, he finally reached freedom and obtained his much--desired MD degree in Austria. He practised medicine in the then fledgling country of Israel, and subsequently settled in Canada. Here, he specialized in psychiatry at Montreal's McGill University, where he later taught.
Dr. Koranyi married Edie Rosenbaum, also a Holocaust survivor, and a lifelong dear partner. In 1970, the University of Ottawa invited him to join its staff, and he has been repeatedly honoured as a distinguished teacher.
