‘Always look for the good in people’
The message by which Louis Forrai, a Holocaust survivor and University of Aberdeen graduate, lived his life, which he dedicated to improving the health of others.
From the Highlands to the north-east of England and then to London, University of Aberdeen graduate Louis Forrai travelled far in his career as a popular GP and GP trainer.
His slight Highland lilt picked up from his days in Inverness, offered few clues to the traumatic journey from wartime Europe to his adopted homeland.
But among his possessions when he died was a Yellow Star of David, a cloth Scottish Mission armband embroidered by his mother, which illustrated that the wearer was under the Kirk’s protection, and a Book of Psalms bearing a Scottish Mission stamp.
We explore the remarkable life of this unassuming man of medicine through his son, David Forrai.
Louis Forrai
Louis Forrai was a modest and quiet man.
His family was made up of hardworking people including eminent physicians stretching back for more than 200 years.
But Louis Forrai was also a Holocaust survivor who escaped the horrors of his hometown of Budapest, Hungary, thanks to the help of Scottish missionaries.
The University of Aberdeen School of Medicine graduate died in July last year aged 90.
David said: “He would never refer to himself as a Holocaust survivor, although others recognised him as such, and in truth that was what he was. However, he didn’t want it to define him, and so he considered himself a very ordinary man, but a very lucky one. His father had told him to always look for the good in people and that’s what he did.”
Medicine was very much in Dr Forrai’s blood, and it was always going to be his chosen career.
A family separated
His father Elemér had foreseen the disaster that was to come in Europe and had travelled to Scotland to continue his work as a doctor in 1938. The plan was that his family would join him, but – overtaken by events - it wasn’t until 1946 that Dr Forrai, then 15, was able to travel to Inverness with his brother and mother.
In the interim, along with his mother, Klári, and brother Martin, in 1944, Dr Forrai had been forced to move into a ‘Yellow Star’ flat in Budapest along with many other members of his family.
They lived under a curfew and food was extremely scarce – often food was unavailable and when it was sometimes there was just one egg between the whole family for a meal. Dr Forrai and his brother were forced into slave labour and spent their days under armed guard clearing rubble and buildings damaged by bombs.
In October and November 1944, as the Nazi and Hungarian fascist terror escalated, the family sought sanctuary in the Scottish Mission attached to St Columba’s Scottish Church in Budapest. Dr Forrai’s mother, Klári, was a friend of Sophie Victor who took over the work of her colleague and friend, the well-known Scot Jane Haining after she was arrested and taken to Auschwitz, where she died three months later in July 1944.
Louis Forrai Scottish Mission ID from 1945
Louis Forrai Scottish Mission ID from 1945
With the help of the Scottish Mission the family were given refuge, hidden in the cellars of the Mission and cared for until they were discovered and marched into the Budapest ghetto, from where they were liberated by the advancing Russians in January 1945.
David said: “On one occasion my father and his brother were caught in a general ‘round-up’ and marched to Ujpest brick factory – usually a precursor to deportation to a camp or a forced (death) march – but released when they learned that all those under the age of 15 would be spared. My father was 14, but his brother was 15, so they hid Martin’s papers in their shoes, persuaded their captors they were 14 year old twins, and were let go!”
Throughout 1945 Dr Forrai, his mother and brother, would return for short periods of time to the Scottish Mission, and were – as always – given help, until in July 1946 they managed to secure safe, legal passage to Scotland, to be reunited with Elemér in Inverness.
“Although he only spoke a few words of English when he arrived in Inverness - once announcing to a perplexed waiter that he was perfectly happy because ‘I am fed up’ (!) - he soon adjusted, learned the language and settled into life in Scotland.”
Giving back
Despite his own hardships, upon arrival in Scotland Dr Forrai immediately set about repaying the kindness of the community which had welcomed him.
“He was eternally grateful to Scotland and the Scottish people for taking him in as he put it, for making him welcome, and for their generosity. When he first arrived, he would open his front door in Inverness to find tins of soup, meat and fresh food left on the step anonymously with notes saying ‘Please enjoy this’, ‘You will probably be grateful for this’, or ‘You’ve been hungry long enough’, and this was in a time of rationing,” David added.
Dr Forrai attended Inverness Royal Academy before moving to Aberdeen to study medicine at the University, graduating in 1955.
David said: “He was very proud of his association with the University and the Medical School. And his year were, I think, a very close-knit class: I know he particularly enjoyed their 50th reunion in 2005. More than that though, the names of many of his contemporaries are very familiar to me, and I remember meeting many of his classmates. To me that seems quite extraordinary.
“He enjoyed his time in Aberdeen and with the encouragement of his landlady, who I think rather spoiled him, developed a lifelong passion for butteries and pan drops.”
After University Dr Forrai moved back to Inverness where he worked at Raigmore and the Royal Infirmary, where he met his wife Eileen, a nurse. They were married in 1956.
Following national service with the British armed forces in Germany, the couple moved to Crook in north-east England and later to Ilford where Dr Forrai continued his career as a GP.
David said: “Family was particularly important to him. He always wanted to know what we were doing, where we were and we invariably had to phone him to let him know that we had arrived home safely.
“One side of his family, his father’s closest relatives, had lived in Kassa (now Kosice, Slovakia) and of 22 members only three survived the war, 18 aunts, uncles and cousins were killed in Auschwitz.
“But he didn’t let what happened to his family burden him and, as his father had encouraged him to do, he always looked for the good in people.
“He was never physically attacked and he considered himself very lucky but he had many stories of close escapes: retelling the story of how three watches, in turn, were forcibly removed from his wrist, he would quip that ‘I gave one watch to the Germans, one to the Hungarians and my last to the Russians. I distributed my wealth fairly and evenly!’ And if he was ever asked to talk about what happened or his experiences, he would, but in a very quiet, understated, measured way. Those qualities, I think, are evident in the interview and testimony he gave to the Shoah Foundation at the behest of Rabbi Hugo Gryn.
“He was inseparable from my mother and they were married for 65 years, though they knew each other for 70 years.”
In 1997, having retired, Dr Forrai and his wife moved to Kirby le Soken, on the Essex coast. He died peacefully, at home with his family around him on the 4th of July, and Eileen died - again at home, peacefully, with her family at her side - on the 23rd of July. A joint service for them was held on the 25th of August. They are survived by their children – David, Gabrielle and Forbes – and three grandchildren, Guy, Grace and Olivia.
Photo credits from top to bottom:
1. Louis (left), Klári (centre) and Martin (right) Forrai in the early 1930s; Image source: private family album
2. A view of Budapest in 1939.; Image source: Chuckyeager tumblr / Fortepan photo id 134146
3. Louis (centre) with his mother Klári (left) and father Elemér (right) in 1938.; Image source: private family album
4. An entrance to one of the "Yellow Star" houses in Budapest in 1944; Image source: Fortepan / Fortepan photo id 200861
5. A Jewish boy with a yellow star sewn on his shirt removes debris from the street in Budapest in 1944; Image source: Fortepan / Fortepan photo id 200850
6. Louis Forrai Scottish Mission ID from 1945.; Image source: private family album
7. Yellow Star of David that Louis had to wear during the German Occupation of Hungary from 1944 to 1945; Image source: private family album
8. Louis Forrai graduation photo from 1955.; Image source: private family album
9. Louis and Eileen Forrai in the early 1960s; Image source: private family album
10. Louis and Eileen Forrai in the early 2000s; Image source: private family album
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