Dr. Anna Ornstein, psychiatry professor who survived and wrote about the Holocaust, dies at 98

Boston Globe

06-07-2025

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'Empathy is a listening position,' she told The Boston Globe in 1983.
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Dr. Ornstein, who years ago began sharing glimpses of her past in stories she read at Passover Seders and collected in her 2004 book
A professor emerita of child psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati, she had also taught at Harvard Medical School and was prolific both as a writer of academic papers and in her Holocaust education efforts.
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She and
Along with him, Dr. Ornstein was a leading proponent of self-psychology,
'Self-psychology simply says, 'Get to know the other — that the skin color, the religion is not what determines a human being,' ' Dr. Ornstein told The New York Times in 2017 for her husband's obit.
She emphasized the value of parents instilling self-esteem in their children. 'Acquisition of self-esteem is more than development. It's a gradual transformation to joy, to accomplishment,' she told the Globe in 1983.
When her husband died, she told the Times that the self-esteem each developed growing up in Hungary played key roles in their surviving the war and later choosing an intellectual and professional path to follow.
'It was never easy to be a Jew in Hungary, but when the ultimate hell broke loose, we were extra fortunate in terms of the parenting, the care and love we had as children,' she told the Times. 'We had very sturdy self-esteem. As much as we were humiliated, we never felt demeaned because we came from a culture and emotional environment that we could be proud of. We were called 'dirty Jews,' but we knew who we really were.'
As a professor, parent, grandparent, and Holocaust education proponent, Dr. Ornstein emphasized the need for empathy and understanding during the more than 80 years she lived after her time in the camps.
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She cautioned against assuming there is a hierarchy of trauma. And despite what she had endured during the Holocaust, she never questioned another person's concerns by saying, 'how could you worry about that, given what I've been through,' said her daughter Miriam of Belmont.
To Dr. Ornstein, Miriam added, 'every person's personal experiences and traumas and losses were extremely valid.'
Anna Brunn was born on Jan. 27, 1927, in Szendro, Hungary, and grew up in the community, which she described as home to fewer than 4,000 people – a place with no electricity or municipal water supply.
'The streets were unpaved. There were no sidewalks,' she wrote in her memoir's opening chapter, 'My Favorite Memories,' adding that 'we drew water from an uncovered well in the middle of the marketplace.'
A young Anna Brunn, in an undated photo from her childhood in Hungary.
Paul & Anna Ornstein, via United States Holocaust Museum/NYT
She was the youngest of three children born to Sophie Furth Brunn and William Brunn, who owned a lumberyard. Even as rising Nazism and antisemitism began limiting educational opportunities for Jews, she yearned to learn more and arranged to live with a relative in another community to attend a secondary school.
When Germany began its occupation of Hungary in March 1944. Dr. Ornstein furtively returned to her home village. Her two brothers were sent to forced labor camps and were killed during the war.
Along with Dr. Ornstein and her mother, her father and grandmother were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered by Nazis.
Dr. Ornstein had met Paul Ornstein, a distant cousin, before the war. He initially heard she hadn't survived, then tracked her down upon learning she was still alive.
They married in 1946 and eventually finished medical studies at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, escaping Hungary just before the Cold War's Iron Curtain closed the border.
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Immigrating to the United States, they settled in Cincinnati for further training there and in Chicago. Both eventually became professors at the University of Cincinnati.
Drs. Anna and Paul Ornstein in 1948.
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While being a mother to three children, all of whom followed their parents into the psychology profession, Dr. Ornstein carefully carved out time to launch her career in teaching and academic writing, sometimes collaborating with her husband on papers.
'She wore several hats,' said her son, Rafael of Watertown. 'Mom would wake up at 5 in the morning, do her writing, make our lunches, make sure we got off to school. She was a powerhouse in that way.'
One day her oldest child, Sharone of Glen Ridge, N.J., returned home from freshman studies at Brandeis University to suggest that they all share personal stories at Passover. For the gathering, Dr. Ornstein wrote a Holocaust story that would become part of her memoir.
'Everyone responded with stunned silence – teary-eyed and appreciative that Anna shared with us a small, circumscribed slice of her camp experiences,' Paul Ornstein wrote in the preface to her book.
Dr. Ornstein 'was a storyteller,' her son said. 'A lot of survivors didn't really tell their stories, and my mother needed to tell her stories.'
A prayer of gratitude, meanwhile, was her constant refrain: ' 'Thank God that we're living in this moment,' ' Rafael recalled. 'That was her favorite prayer, and she would say it often. There was a way that she was so appreciative of life.'
In addition to her three children, Dr. Ornstein leaves seven grandchildren.
A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday in Beth El Temple Center in Belmont. Burial will follow in Beit Olam East Cemetery in Wayland.
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Having become a doctor, professor, and writer in an era when women often faced significant barriers, Dr. Ornstein was an inspiration to her daughters and women beyond her family.
'From an early age, as a female, there was no question that I would have a career,' Miriam said.
Dr. Ornstein,
She criticized the treatment and demonization of immigrants, which to her recalled how Jews were treated during the Holocaust.
'Once prejudice has become state-sanctioned, fascists are ignited,'
'It's in the air,' she said. 'Do not look away. Do not get used to it. These are the early signs of how a democracy can be undermined and destroyed. It can be dismantled in a slow, methodical way.'
Bryan Marquard can be reached at