By Marjorie Searl
Dr. Eric M. Dreyfuss was born 1930 in Bad Homburg, Germany, to Dr. Walter and Hedwig Dreyfuss. Bad Homburg was a charming spa town, where Jews had been living as early as the 1500s. By 1933, the year that Hitler was elected chancellor and boycotts of Jewish businesses were announced, the Jewish population had declined to 300 people. In 1934, when he was four years old, young Eric sailed with his mother, Hedwig, on the S.S. Europa to join his physician father in Amsterdam, New York. Fortunately for them, they left before 1942/43, when of the 74 Jews remaining in Bad Homburg, 42 were deported to Auschwitz where they were killed.
In 1953, he graduated from Cornell University and the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science at Chicago Medical School. He returned to Amsterdam and practiced medicine, but by the 1960s he and his wife Sandra were living in Rochester. He was an allergist and pediatric allergist in Rochester for over 50 years, and retired as Emeritus Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He was past president of the Rochester Pediatric Society. Dr. Dreyfuss died after a long and accomplished life in 2021.