In Memoriam: Anna Ornstein, MD, and Lessons Learned From Holocaust Survivor Psychiatrists

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“From the beginning, there has been a search for scapegoats. In Europe, the Jews were the target. In this country, Muslims and immigrants have become the hated minorities, and the ever-present anti-Semitism has been reactivated.” - Anna Ornstein, MD

“There is perhaps no one who more fits the description of humanitarian psychoanalyst and activist than Dr. Ornstein.” - On being awarded the Arthur R. Kravitz Award for Community Action and Humanitarian Contributions, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, 2018

I do not think we ever did a eulogy here of a psychiatrist that was posted right around the same time as the funeral. That now is the case with Anna Ornstein, MD, psychiatrist, child psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. Her funeral is scheduled for 11 AM Eastern time in Boston today. There also may not be another eulogy that is so relevant for our current time in society.

Serendipity and Anna Ornstein

There is more that makes her life and death especially meaningful and, if I may suggest once again, seemingly serendipitous. Though I did not know her personally, I found some unexpected connections, including also receiving a humanitarian award and being a psychiatrist activist. Given the Jewish ancient moral principle that one is responsible not for finishing the necessary work to make the world better, but to contributing what we can to that goal, no wonder we might be connected in some way to humanitarian causes.

She died at the age of 98 on July 2, 2025, the day before the passing of the federal “big beautiful bill.” I assume she would be dismayed about at least some aspects of the bill, for she was concerned in her late years that our country was becoming more fascist during our current and related past administration.

Most appropriately, her obituary in the New York Times, titled “Anna Ornstein, Psychoanalyst Who Survived the Holocaust, Dead at 98,” was published on the 4th of July, our nation’s 249th anniversary.¹ After I read that article, and during a hot shower I took, I had chills and goosebumps on my skin, along with mental association to the goose-steps of the Nazi troops.

Her independence, and that of her mother and countless Jews, was squashed by the Nazis. Like now, there was much controversy about immigration. After an acceptance period earlier in the 20th century, Jews were blocked right before and during World War II from immigrating to the United States.

At the age of 17, she and her mother were deported from Hungary and arrived in Auschwitz in the first week of June 1944, which happened to coincide with the invasion of the American troops on the beaches of Normandy, France.² The rest of her immediate family reportedly died during the time. Her positivity was encouraged by her mother even in the concentration camp, reframing the smoke from the chimneys of the crematorium. She recalled “joy” at being tattooed as that meant she would do labor.

Meant to Be: Anna and Paul Ornstein

In 1946, she somehow was able to reunite with her childhood sweetheart, Paul, who also survived the concentration camps. Whether meaningful or not, that happened to also be the year I was born, eventually to come to recognize that I needed to work more to prevent any other Holocaust.

After even having difficulty getting out of Hungary, they came to Heidelberg, Germany, where they attended medical school, along with some German Nazi survivor soldiers. As immigration of Holocaust survivors was opened up for refugees after the war, they then came to the United States in 1951 and ended up being based in Cincinnati most of the time. They were trained in the new self-psychology developed by Heinz Kohut, MD, at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis in the early 1970s, around the same time I had residency training and such invaluable teaching from Dr Kohut at the University of Chicago. The concern of some degree of narcissistic rage after humiliation became a lifelong concern for us. They had 3 children, all of whom significantly became psychiatrists, and 2 of whom also became psychoanalysts.

They were married for 71 years until Paul died the day before Donald Trump was sworn in as President for his first term. Paul Ornstein, MD, was one of my early eulogies for Psychiatric Times on December 20, 2017, titled “Challenges in Eulogizing Psychiatrist Colleagues.”

Almost until she died, Anna Ornstein began speaking out on the possibility of another Holocaust. She often spoke of how democracies can erode slowly, then rapidly escalating if ignored or not addressed adequately. She said:

“It’s in the air. Do not look away. Do not get used to it.”

If interested, there is “A Conversation with Dr. Anna Ornstein and Mark Ludwig” on YouTube by the Terezin Music Foundation from January 27, 2023. Terezin, also known as Theresienstadt, was the main concentration camp for children, but disguised for the outside world to look like a normal community. Talk about “alternative facts”!

Both Ornsteins wrote autobiographies.^3,4 They also cofounded the International Center for the Study of Psychoanalytic Self-Psychology. Both were renowned for their skill in applying self-psychology, with its emphasis on empathy, not only to their patients, but to find the sparks of humanity even in German Nazis and to laugh at their own foibles.

Besides the possibility of the recycling of souls in past and future lives, there is a Jewish concept of Beshert, “meant to be.” Another colleague wrote in her funeral memory book:

“She and Paul through their supervision and written works gave me a better understanding of the soul of psychotherapy. Their courage and gentle humor was always a delight to hear and see at conferences.”

Is it possible that they were a model love story for the world of partners in life, perhaps destined to experience, and then point the ways to be healed, from the worst tendencies of human nature? The week started on June 30th for my wife and I with our 57th anniversary. Hopefully, we are following some of their model.

Anna Ornstein’s Specialties

By no means was Anna Ornstein less renowned than her husband, at least in my eyes. Mainly after her husband died, she added an emphasis of concern about our climate crisis. In that regard, she likely would not have been surprised at the climate-related 4th of July historic flash flood disaster of the Guadalupe River overflowing in Texas and killing young girls at camp, while it seems that the federal and Texas state government has been downgrading climate concerns, prevention, and preparation.

Among other insights, she early on recognized the tendency to ignore the horrors of the survivors in societal tributes and even therapists treating survivors. She herself decided not to treat survivors due to the escalated potential of countertransference intrusions from her own traumatic experiences. She describes a “memorial space” of triggers from trauma.

She worked with children and families of all socio-economic backgrounds, especially on mourning after genocide and recovery from trauma. It may be self-evident that her insights can be applied, as she would likely desired, to the potential recovery of traumatized children who survive the war in Gaza, and also Ukraine, among other war zones.

Other Holocaust Psychiatrists Who Survived and Thrived

There may be something very special about survivors of the Holocaust concentration camps who became psychiatrists. Besides the Ornsteins, I also did a eulogy of Henry Krystal, MD, in the December 15th, 2015, column “Year in Review 2015: Farewell.” After surviving Auschwitz, he became a pioneer in interviewing Holocaust survivors. Like the Ornsteins, and even if he was concerned about how his Holocaust experience would affect his sons, one of his sons become the Chair of Psychiatry at my medical school alma mater, Yale, and the other a prominent psychiatrist at Duke. Leo Eitinger, MD, was a Norwegian psychiatrist who also survived Auschwitz and pioneered the study of the delayed onset of posttraumatic stress disorder, to help explain the suicide several decades after the Shoah of some survivors, including the well-known writers Paul Celan and Primo Levy. He also contributed much to the related field of military psychiatry and traumatized soldiers. Most will know of Viktor Frankl, MD, PhD, who was already a psychiatrist when he was put in a concentration camp and survived to go on to write the perennial bestseller, Man’s Search for Meaning. Anna Ornstein may be the last of this illustrative Holocaust survivor psychiatrist group to die.

As if becoming a psychiatrist was not challenging enough, these psychiatrists had to usefully integrate childhood horrors into their psychiatrist souls, transforming any anger into caring and healing. These concentration camp survivors are also part of the larger group of psychiatrists and other psychiatric colleagues who came from increasing anti-Semitism in Europe to make major contributions to the development of psychiatry in America.⁵

I apologize if I have made too many connections to my own life, but hope the lives of these psychiatrists not only have scholarly implications, but personal ones to other psychiatrists and other readers. As I mentioned in my recent video on a social psychiatric Declaration of Interdependence, they seem to represent much of what has made America great: immigration to save lives, freedom of minds, and the pursuit of mental health.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Gabriel T. Anna Ornstein, psychoanalyst who survived the Holocaust, dead at 98. New York Times. July 4, 2025. Accessed July 8, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/health/anna-ornstein-dead.html

2. Ornstein A. Then and now again: reflections on the past in the current political climate. Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. 2020. Accessed July 8, 2025. https://bpsi.org/then-and-now-again-reflections-on-the-past-in-the-current-political-climate/

3. Ornstein A. My Mother’s Eyes: Holocaust Memories of a Young Girl. Clerisy Press; 2004.

4. Ornstein P, Epstein H. Looking Back: Memoir of a Psychoanalyst. Plunkett Lake Press; 2015.

5. Packer S. How anti-Semitism and the Shoah helped shape twentieth-century psychiatry. In: Moffic HS, Peteet JR, Hankir A, Seeman MV. eds. Anti-Semitism and Psychiatry. Springer; 2020:83-97.