1. Early life & survival of the Holocaust

2. Education

3. Life after the Holocaust

4. Career

5. Family

6. References

Paul Hermann Ornstein (April 4, 1924 - January 19, 2017) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor.

Early life & survival of the Holocaust

Ornstein was born in Hungary in a Jewish family to parents, Abraham Ornstein, an accountant, and Frieda Sziment. In March 1944, Germans invaded Hungary, and as a young teenager, Ornstein was forced by the German Army to dig trenches as part of a forced labor battalion in World War II. After the Red Army pushed west, he spent several months during 1944 hiding in the basement of the annex of the Swiss Embassy in Budapest. When the war ended, he returned to his home town in Hungary; he was just 17 and initially found no surviving relatives. Later, he reunited with his father.^[1][2]

Education

Ornstein attended Franz Josef National Rabbinical Seminary in Debrecen, Hungary, and during that time, he met his future wife Anna Brunn. After the Holocaust, Paul and Anna were reunited and both enrolled in medical school together in Germany at the Heidelberg University School of Medicine.^[3]

Life after the Holocaust

Three weeks after their marriage, Paul and Anna attempted to flee Hungary. At first, the government apprehended them, gave them a warning, and then released them. After their second attempt, the Zionist Underground Movement helped Anna and Paul safely into Vienna, Austria. Upon briefly staying in Vienna, the two left for Bavaria and then to Heidelberg, Germany. In Heidelberg, they began medical school together at the Heidelberg University School of Medicine, where there were many former Nazi soldiers among their classmates.^[1] They lived and studied in Heidelberg until 1952, when they immigrated to the United States.^[3] However, only five states would allow them to take medical board exams which would certify them as American doctors, merely because of their immigrant status. Eventually, the two moved to Ohio, and he scored the highest in the state on the exam.^[4]

Career

Both Paul and Anna Ornstein were active in the self psychology movement, which challenged traditional Freudian analysis.^[1]

Ornstein worked as a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis at the University of Cincinnati Medical School and was a Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.^[5]

He wrote Focal Psychotherapy: An Example of Applied Psychoanalysis with Michael Balint and Enid Balint and also edited The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut.^[5] In 2015, he published a memoir, Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst, which Helen Epstein co-authored.^[6][7]

Family

Although her deportation to Auschwitz separated them during the war, Paul and Anna found their way back to one another.^[4] The two married in 1946. Before his passing, Paul and Anna were married for 71 years and raised three children, Sharone, Miriam, and Rafael, all of whom became psychiatrists.^[1]

References

• Occupational asthma - Metals
• Occupational Asthma - Metals
• Occupational asthma - Plants
• Occupational Asthma - Plants
• Occupational Asthma - Wood dust
• Occupational cancer
• Occupational Cancer Convention
• Occupational & Environmental Medicine
• Occupational folklore
• Occupational hazards of grain facilities
• Occupational health and safety
• Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1993
• Occupational Health and Safety Act 2000
• Occupational Health and Safety Act NSW 2000
• Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) Act 2000
• Occupational Health and Safety Regulation of British Columbia
• Occupational healthcare
• Occupational health nursing
• Occupational health psychologist
• Occupational Health & Safety
• Occupational hygienists
• Occupational injustice
• Occupational licensure
• Occupational mobility
• Occupational Privilege Tax