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view . summer 2010
The Boston Globe
- Nearly 20 years ago, Alan Brown was teaching
economics at the University of Windsor when an encounter with a
student gave him pause.
The student was facing expulsion for being a Holocaust
denier and wanted a note from Dr. Brown stating he had never
disrupted class.
Dr. Brown agreed to write the note on the condition that the
student visit a nearby Holocaust museum with him. Unbeknownst
to his students and colleagues, Dr. Brown was a Holocaust survivor
who had lost his entire family at the hands of the Nazis. However,
he rarely spoke of his experiences, even at home, because he did
not want to focus on the negative, according to his wife.
The student did not take the offer of a museum tour and never
contacted the professor again. But Dr. Brown realized he needed
to speak out.
“At that point, I think Alan realized there was a need, a reason’’
to speak about the Holocaust, said his wife, Barbara (Delson) of
Malden, Massachusetts. “Before then he thought, ‘Why belabor the
point if there’s no point to it at all?’ Then he began to realize how
very important it was.’’
Before long Dr. Brown became a frequent speaker at schools,
churches, and service organizations on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust
Remembrance Day.
Each time, he was sure to touch on two points — the
importance of doing the right thing in life no matter the situation,
and the story of Frau Rosa Schreiber, an Austrian who helped save
him when he was imprisoned in a makeshift labor camp outside the
small town of Neuhaus near the border with Hungary.
“To him, her act signified hope,’’ said his daughter, Fern Remedi-
Brown of Malden.
Dr. Brown, who had been slowed in recent years by Parkinson’s
disease, died March 22 at his Malden home after he suffered what
doctors believe was a heart attack. He was 82.
After moving to the Boston area in the mid-1990s, Dr. Brown
began doing speaking engagements with his daughter, who is a
lesbian, about the civil rights issues that touched their lives and the
similarities they shared, “which were many,’’ Remedi-Brown said.
Father and daughter also joined the Legacy Project at the
Holocaust Center, Boston North Inc., an initiative of the Peabody
Institute Library to record and preserve the stories of Holocaust
survivors living in the area.
In a video made for the project, Dr. Brown recalls working in the
labour camps and how his father died in his arms from typhus the
night after their camp was liberated by the Russians. He also speaks
about honoring the woman who saved his life.
“Since retiring as a professor of economics, I have devoted
myself to education on the Holocaust,’’ he explains in the video,
which intersperses clips of the quiet, measured man relating his
story with photos from his childhood.
Alan Andrew Brown was born Andor Braun, the only child of
Sandor and Erna (Kallos), in Miskolc, Hungary, in 1928. In 1944,
German forces invaded his hometown and incarcerated his family in
the Miskolc ghetto.
His father was the first member of the family to be seized. He
was placed into the labour camp near Neuhaus. Not long afterward,
Dr. Brown was taken from his mother, aunt, and grandparents, who
DR. ALAN BROWN,
THE HOLOCAUST
a professor who survived
BY STEPHANIE M. PETERS
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
APRIL 12, 2010
