Dreams and Tears: Chronicle of a Life

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

Erwin Koranyi was born in Budapest in 1924. As a Jewish boy growing up
in the perilous world of Nazism, Koranyi dreamed in vain of becoming a
physician. Less than a year after the Nazi takeover of Hungary in March
1944, more than half a million Jews were killed. The newly married
Koranyi, his wife, and his family were among those who survived, thanks
to Raoul Wallenberg, a special envoy at the Swedish Embassy who issued
them with passports.

After the war ended, Koranyi fulfilled his childhood dream when he
qualified as a doctor in Austria. He moved to Israel and then to Canada
where he became a psychiatrist of some note, teaching and working
alongside many of the profession’s pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s.

Dr. Koranyi tells the story of his early life honestly and
dispassionately. The quietness of the narrative serves as a counterpoint
to the enormity of the horror he lived through. Dreams and Tears is a
worthwhile addition to the literature about the Holocaust.