Eric Roman

Born in the city of Bekescsaba in southeast Hungary near the Yugoslavian border, Roman learned to be a tailor in Budapest because Nazi-inspired laws in Hungary prohibited him from going to a university. When World War II came, the pro-Nazi government first threw Roman into Jewish work brigades and then, in the last five months of the war, into the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria -- a massive, sprawling center of slave labor and gas chambers that imprisoned at many as 85,000 people at a time. About 119,000 people died there. When U.S. Army forces liberated the camp in 1945, Roman weighed 90 pounds, and his entire family were dead. Roman returned to Budapest from the camp after the war, only to realize he'd never fit in with the Communist regime there. He bribed his way across the border into Austria in 1948, then made his way to Paris. From there, he got a visa to go to Brazil. From Brazil, he flew to Montreal, then crossed the border into the United States. Roman began working in New York City as a tailor while writing on the side. At the urging of his wife, he went to Hunter College in New York City to study English. After getting his B.A. in English from Hunter, Roman started post-graduate work at New York University, where he earned his doctorate in international relations. When a teaching position opened up at what was then Danbury State Teachers College, he accepted a position as an assistant professor there. He was a highly respected and beloved teacher at this institution for 42 years, until his retirement in May 2007. Roman was a member of Rotary and the United Jewish Center in Danbury. Along with his teaching duties, he wrote three novels, two works of history on the Stalinist era in Hungary, and a vast, encyclopedic bibliography called "Austria-Hungary and the Successor States.".