Reunion of Holocaust survivors has ripple effect – Daily Press

Linda Ambrus Broenniman, who lives in Northern Virginia, was alerted by a good friend to look at the information on TV.

She was instructed the CNN newscast contained a report in regards to the reunion of two Holocaust survivors: Dr. George Berci, a world-renowned surgeon and medical analysis pioneer, and me in Los Angeles.

[ An extraordinary reunion of two Holocaust survivors ]

Broenniman observed that not solely had been the medical profession and accomplishments of Dr. Berci similar to her father’s, however their household background and survival throughout World Conflict II was additionally comparable.

She contacted Dr. Berci and instructed him her household’s saga, which she herself discovered about solely after years of painstaking analysis.

Linda Broenniman instructed me that after a home hearth on the household’s house in Buffalo, New York, which resulted within the dying of her mom at age 86, a non-descript brown field in some way survived the fireplace.

“The content material turned the catalyst for a journey of discovery whose seeds had been planted 35 years in the past — the day I discovered that my Catholic father was Jewish and what little household historical past I knew was a lie.”

In a synopsis of her forthcoming ebook, “The Politzer Saga,” Linda talks about her household background.

“I’m the center youngster of seven kids born to Hungarian physicians who survived World Conflict II and began their new life in US. We had been raised Catholic, in Buffalo. It was a cheerful childhood. A charmed life. However there have been secrets and techniques. Nobody spoke of the previous, about their lives and households earlier than the conflict. As I received older, it develop into unattainable to disregard a gnawing want for fact.”

With the assistance of a Hungarian researcher, Linda was in a position to piece collectively her household’s previous.

Her father, Dr. Julian Ambrus Sr., was born in Budapest, Hungary, and commenced his medical research in 1942 on the College of Budapest. There, he met a fellow scholar, Clara Bayer, they usually fall in love.

In Might 1944, nonetheless, Julian, like different Jews, was conscripted right into a Nazi slave labor camp.

“It isn’t fairly clear the place the labor camp was, however was not removed from Jolsva, excessive within the Ore Mountains,” Linda stated. “Someday the camp was bombed. Fever than a 3rd of the folks survived. My father and 5 of his pals miraculously escaped. They hid within the woods however had been captured twice. One way or the other, they had been in a position to get free and get on a prepare again to Budapest. And again to my mom.”

In the meantime, Clara moved into an deserted manufacturing unit the place she was hiding her Jewish pals and their households. When Julian returned, he and certainly one of his pals additionally hid in Clara’s deserted manufacturing unit.

In January 1945, throughout the siege of Budapest by the Crimson Military, Julian and two of his pals went out to search for meals. This time they had been captured by Soviet troopers and brought to a prisoner of conflict camp. Finally, Julian was let out and instructed to go to Szeged, a safer metropolis than Budapest.

“When my father arrived in Szeged, the medical college was beginning once more. My mom, walked to Szeged, greater than 100 miles, to satisfy up with my father and enroll within the medical college. My dad and mom had been married in Szeged in February 1945. On the finish of April, they returned to Budapest and resumed their medical research there.”

In 1947, Julian Ambrus obtained a scholarship to the College of Zurich, and along with Clara, completed their medical research. From Zurich, they went to Paris to do fellowships on the Pasteur Institute. They will need to have constructed a repute, as a result of in 1950, they had been recruited to the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.

Having made a reputation for himself within the subject of drugs, Dr. Ambrus, in 1955, was invited to Roswell Park Most cancers Institute as principal most cancers analysis scientist and was put in command of Roswell’s Springville Laboratory. He turned it into its personal analysis unit, with 100 folks working there.

Dr. Ambrus died in 2020, at age 95. He was named a laureate, the best honor of the American School of Physicians.

He and his spouse Clara, who was acknowledged by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as “Righteous Amongst Nations” for saving Jews throughout the Holocaust, additionally helped settle refugees from the 1956 Hungarian rebellion.

All this makes their daughter, Linda, immensely pleased with her dad and mom. Nonetheless, she wanted to delve into their private tales to intensify her consciousness of the current.

Once I requested Linda, why is it necessary to her to share her household’s saga with the general public, she stated:

“Rising up, I knew nothing about my parental ancestors — not even their final names. Together with their names, who they had been, how they lived, what they achieved — all had disappeared misplaced and forgotten by my father’s silence. To search out them has been a blessing. To share their lives assist me  to know they had been actual and remind me all that was misplaced when their lives had been hidden.”

Shatz is a Williamsburg resident. He’s the creator of “Experiences from a Distant Place,” the compilation of his selective columns . The ebook is on the market on the Bruton Parish Store, and Amazon.com