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were later sent to Auschwitz with the rest of the Hungarian Jews in
Miskolc. Although no records were kept, those family members are
believed to have died in Auschwitz, according to his daughter.
Only 16 years old at the time, Dr. Brown would have gone to
Auschwitz, too, had it not been for a bilingual guard, who instructed
him to lie and say he was 18, according to his daughter. Men of
working age, typically between the ages of 18 and mid-50s, were
sent to labor camps.
Remedi-Brown describes the encounter as the first miracle of
her father’s life.
“To have told the truth would have meant certain death,’’
she said.
While in the camp, Dr. Brown and his father built roads, worked
in mines, cleared snow, and dug ditches and tank traps.
Many of the exhausted, frostbitten prisoners fell ill with typhus,
including Dr. Brown’s father.
“I was desperate to get him medicine
to reduce his fever and get him some
edible food,’’ Dr. Brown recalled in his
Legacy Project video, which can be
found on YouTube.
(YouTube search:
Alan Brown) “One night I managed to
sneak out.’’
He ran to what looked like a pharmacy
with an after-hours bell, and there he
met Schreiber, a woman in her 30s “with
a strange kindness about her’’ who ran
the store, he said. She gave him food and
medicine for his father that night, and
told him to look each day for additional
supplies in the snow by a well he passed on his
way to work.
The supplies helped, but the teen also became ill. However, he
and his father were able to avoid being rounded up with the camp’s
sickest patients, who were taken by the truckload to what they were
told was the hospital but in reality was a killing field.
Dr. Brown’s father died the night
after the camp was liberated by the Russians in 1945.
Four years later, Dr. Brown arrived in Miami, a 21-year-old
with little money and very little knowledge of English. He quickly
learned, however, and earned a high school equivalency diploma.
Dr. Brown headed to the City College of New York, a working-
class school with the nickname “the poor man’s Harvard.’’ After
facing an uphill battle for admittance without a high school diploma,
Dr. Brown met Barbara Delson waiting in line to register for classes.
“He used to tell a funny joke,’’ she said of their meeting. “That it
took so long to register that by the time we got through the line we
were married.’’
They were married in reality in 1955, the same year Dr. Brown, a
top economics student at the school, founded Omicron Chi Epsilon,
an economics honor society that merged in 1963 with Omicron
Delta Gamma to form Omicron Delta Epsilon, one of the largest
academic honor societies in the world, according to its website.
In 1957, the Browns graduated from City College, Dr. Brown as
first in his class, according to his wife. They had two sons, Stephen
and Dennis, in addition to a daughter, Fern. Dennis died in 2009.
In 1957, the Browns moved to Central Square in Cambridge
and Dr. Brown entered Harvard Graduate School. He earned his
master’s degree in 1959 and his doctorate in 1966 — both degrees
in economics. His specialty was centrally planned economies in
Eastern Europe, a subject on which he authored numerous books
and articles.
Over a 30-year career, he taught at several colleges and
universities, including Harvard Graduate School, the University of
Southern California, Indiana University, and, finally, the University
of Windsor, where he spent about 23 years, retiring in 1994,
according to his wife. The Browns moved to Malden in 1997.
Throughout his career, Dr. Brown
devoted a great deal of effort to
recognizing the woman who had saved
his life. On a trip to Austria in 1961, the
Browns located Frau Rosa Schreiber and
“she became a part of our life until she
died,’’ said Mrs. Brown.
Schreiber knew very little English and
was legally blind, but she later travelled
by herself to the United States to visit the
Browns. On a later visit to the Browns,
Schreiber was honored by 2,000 people
with a memorial dinner at the Detroit
Holocaust Center.
For years, however, Dr. Brown had worked to have Schreiber
recognized with an even greater honor — being granted the title
of “righteous gentile’’ by the State of Israel and recognized with a
certificate of honor and her name at Yad Vashem, a memorial in
Jerusalem.
The honour of righteous gentiles, non-Jews who risked their
lives during the Holocaust to save Jews, is not given lightly,
however, and for years Dr. Brown searched for a second witness to
confirm her service, he said in the video.
Dr. Brown found one witness during
a 1995 visit to Austria, but Schreiber
died the following year, before she could receive her award. It was
granted posthumously in 1997.
In 2004, Dr. Brown was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and
retired from public speaking, but he maintained his wit and grace as
well as his thirst for learning, according to his daughter.
In addition to his wife and daughter, Dr. Brown leaves his son,
Stephen of Windsor, Ontario, Canada; four granddaughters, and
four grandsons.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
* © 2010 NY Times Co.
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.
