Dr. med.
Ernst (Ernö) Egan
1885 - 1945

Ernö Egan was born Ernst Engelsmann on October 2, 1885, in Brno, in the former Austrohungarian empire. His parents were Wilhelm Engelsmann, a merchant, and Therese, née Wertheimer. Egan’s grandfather Adolf worked as a  doctor in Vienna. His family practiced the Jewish faith.

Ernst Engelsmann studied medicine at the Royal Hungarian University in Budapest, where his name is documented in student lists from 1905 to 1909.

Education and place of work

From 1909 until 1910, he worked at the Budapest University Hospital’s eye clinic. On October 7, 1910, Ernst Engelsmann changed his family name to Egan and thereafter called himself Ernö Egan (entry in the birth register in Brno).

Egan transferred to the Third Medical University Clinic in Budapest under the direction of Baron Sandor (Alexander) von Koranyi (1866 to 1944), who strongly influenced internal medicine in Budapest for many years and, like Egan, was also a member of the (D)GVS.

Documentation from the Dean’s meetings at the Budapest Medical Faculty demonstrate that Ernö Egan’s contract as an unpaid intern was extended on a yearly basis until 1919. In 1912, Dr. Egan published a paper together with Rudolf Balint on changes in muscle irritability in various diseases.

Rudolf Balint was a well-known Hungarian neurologist (1874 to 1929) and the first to describe Balint’s syndrome. During this time at the 3rd Medical Clinic of the University Hospital in Budapest, Ernst Egan was in contact with colleagues in Vienna and may have spent some time as a visiting scholar in the Austrian capital. In collaboration with the Central X-ray Institute of the General Hospital in Vienna under the direction of Guido Holzknecht, Egan published a paper on “Acidity and Emptying. Investigated by means of a permanent stomach tube and fluoroscopy.” In collaboration with Otto Porges, Egan published a paper on a flour based soup in the dietary treatment of peptic ulcer disease.

During World War I, he served as senior physician in the 1st Honvéd Budapest Infantry Regiment. He worked in a field hospital, where he headed the infectious diseases department. In Russia, he contracted malaria but soon resumed his work in the hospital. He was promoted several times and received multiple awards. Egan used his experience treating soldiers in his own research, culminating in the publication of “Zur Klinik und Pathogenese der Ruhr” (On the Clinic and Pathogenesis of Dysentery), which appeared after the end of the war.

In 1919, Ernö Egan moved to Szeged at Mikszáth Kálmán Street 4 to continue his work as both an internist and as a radiologist.

On December 19, 1922, he married Anna Fried, born in 1900, and their daughter Marianne was born in 1926.

In addition to his practice, he was head of the X-ray department at the Toth Sanatorium, a small hospital in Szeged, located a few streets away from his practice.

After 1933

Anti-Semitism manifested itself clearly in Hungary at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. It was not considered uncommon for individuals with German or Jewish-sounding names to change their names to be more Hungarian names. In 1920, a numerus clausus was introduced at universities, limiting the number of Jewish students accepted to study. In 1938, anti-Jewish laws were enacted in Hungary (restricting the proportion of Jews in banks, industrial enterprises, and journalism). Following the combined German and Hungarian declaration of war in 1941 against the Soviet Union, thousands of Jews from the Carpathian Ukraine were deported to the German-occupied part of Ukraine, where they were brutally murdered. Starting in the fall of 1942, the Nazi government pressured the Hungarian government to deliver them the remaining Hungarian Jews. Initially, the Hungarian government refused the orders, however in 1943, Jewish labor service soldiers were sent to work in Germany under Nazi rule.

The systematic deportation of Jews to Auschwitz and other extermination camps initiated after the German Wehrmacht occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944. Approximately 200,000 Jews were forced to work in Germany and other German occupied territories, for example Austria. More than half of the 825,000 (68.5%, 565,000 individuals) Jews documented to be living in Hungary between 1941 and 1945 were murdered in the Holocaust. The remaining 260,000 Hungarian Jews survived.

Starting on July 17, 1944, 80 Hungarian Jews (including doctors, veterinarians, merchants, bank directors, and their families) were deported to Göstling, Lower Austria. The prisoners, including Erno Egnan, his wife Anna and their daughter Mariannae were forced to work and were considered “exchangeable Jews”. The term “exchangeable Jews” refers to the fact that the Nazis wanted to use these individuals as bargaining instruments in exchange for war materials and for foreign currency during negotiations.

On April 13, 1945, a group of local Nazis (Waffen-SS, Hitler Youth) “liquidated” the “Jewish camp” in the early morning hours by setting fire to the barracks, throwing hand grenades and shooting at the barracks with bazookas. During this time, 76 individuals, including Ernö Egan, his wife, and daughter, remained in the camp. The Jews who attempted an escape were murdered with submachine guns. The same local Nazi group was responsible for two further massacres of Hungarian Jews in the Scheibbs district of Randegg and Gresten in the following days.

Following the massacre on April 13,1945, the victims were buried on the spot. A few years later, the bodies were exhumed and reburied in the Göstling cemetery. A memorial plaque commemorates the murdered Jewish victims.

The names of Dr. Ernö Egan, his wife Anna, and their daughter Marianne are inscribed on the memorial column in the Göstling cemetery.