Dreams and Tears: Chronicle of a Life

In Dreams and Tears, Dr. Erwin K. Koranyi portrays a world destined for and caught in the chaos and senselessness of war--Budapest from the 1920s to the 1940s. His childhood hope of becoming a physician appeared to be a futile notion in a milieu of moderate anti-Semitism relentlessly bourgeoning into a murderous regime. Almost 600,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in less than one year. Survival became an hour-to-hour lottery. A fortunate turn of events brought Koranyi in contact with Raul Wallenberg, special envoy of the Swedish Embassy, who saved him from certain destruction. Thereafter, Koranyi found himself under the thumb of yet another dictatorship. But Koranyi was not to be denied his childhood dream: he found a way to study medicine. After an adventurous escape through the Iron Curtain, he wandered about in many places before he settled in Canada, where he finally began to practise medicine and teach psychiatry.