Ervin G. Erdoes M.D.

1922 - 2019

Ervin G. Erdoes was born on October 16th, 1922 to his father, Andör and mother, Aranka Erdös in Budapest Hungary Hungary. His father served as an officer during WWI in the Hungarian Army and went on to become a respected engineer in Budapest, until the rise of Hitler, and Hungary entry into the "Axis" pact of the Nazi empire. Shortly after Ervin graduated from high school in 1940, he was conscripted, because of his Jewish faith, by the fascist Hungarian Army into a forced labor brigade. Following the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, Ervin and his father were deported and shipped by cattle car to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.

When they arrived, they were forewarned before by another prisoner to lie to the German SS about their vocational skills, so that they would be placed in a forced labor factory, rather than being sent to the gas chambers or the death camp at Auschwitz. And so, they told the SS they were lathe operators, and were promptly assigned to the nearby Henkel munitions factory, where they secretly sabotaged their work so that the ammunition would blow up on the German army.

While imprisoned at Sachsenhausen, Ervin witnessed the bull whipping of Jehovah's witnesses, the suicide of prisoners throwing themselves against the electric fence surrounding the camp, the cruel experiments on the prisoners and the mass starvation of all those interned in the camp. Only 5% of those who were sent with Ervin via train to Sachsenhausen survived.

In April of 1945, during the Allied Invasion of Germany, Ervin was hit by shrapnel in a heavy air raid on Berlin and the nearby concentration camp. He fled the camp, only to realize he had nowhere to go but back, starving and unable to determine friend from foe in the nearby German village. A few days later, after

on April 21, 1945, the SS evacuated the camp to avoid the discovery of their atrocities.

The SS drove all of the prisoners north on a "Todesamarsch" or death march toward the Baltic Sea. Those who couldn't march were shot, their bodies left in the frozen ditches along the roadway.

Ervin witnessed a man saying his last prayer in Hebrew just before he was shot in the back of the head. When the column of prisoners reached a forest, the Bellower Woods, they were ordered to bed for the night. Many of the Jewish Polish, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and others, carved their last wills out in the trees. Those trees still stand in the woods today.

Fortunately, the march was cut off and saved by an advance battalion from the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army.

Following his liberation, Ervin and his father, who had gone blind from malnutrition, walked back from Berlin to Budapest, where Ervin enrolled in medical school.

By 1950, the Communist regime in Hungary made finishing his final year in medical school impossible. Branded by the Communists as a dissident, in April of 1950, Ervin smuggled himself across the minefields, past the armed patrols, secret police, machine gun towers, and barbed wire of the Iron Curtain between Hungary and Austria.

He arrived in Munich a few days later. He enrolled in at the University of Munich medical school and completed his medical degree a year later, despite having to learn the language. In 1952, he went to work in a laboratory in Munich, studying enzymes and peptides and how they aided in the control of blood pressure. From there on, medical research became his lifelong passion and profession.

In 1954, Ervin emigrated to the United States. From 1957-1963, he worked at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa.

In 1963, Ervin and his family moved to Oklahoma City, where he served as head of pharmacology at the University of Oklahoma medical school from 1963-1973. In 1973, Ervin became a professor of pharmacology and ran a research laboratory at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. In 1985, Ervin moved to Chicago where he met his wife, Sara Rabito, a researcher and Anesthesiologist at Cook County Hospital. There he joined the Univ. of Illinois College Medicine as Professor of Pharmacology and Anesthesiology and Director of the Laboratory of Peptide Research until 2005, when he became Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology. He continued active research into his late 80's.

Ervin was a world-renowned scientist whose research and discoveries regarding the biochemistry and functions of cardiovascular peptides (such as angiotensin and bradykinin) and the enzymes that regulate their activity (such as angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE), carboxypeptidases and neutral endopeptidase) greatly increased our understanding of how blood pressure and cardiovascular functions can be controlled. His mechanistic studies on ACE formed the foundation for the development of ACE inhibitors, which have become the most frequently prescribed drug for treating hypertension and congestive heart failure. Ervin's research resulted in nearly 300 publications and garnered numerous national and international awards including the 1988 E.K Frey – E. Werle Foundation Gold Medal Prize, MERIT Award grant of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH (1988), the 1994 CIBA Award for Hypertension Research. He was also the First Recipient of the College of Medicine - Pioneer in Medicine in 2014. A wonderful recognition and a lifetime achievement of excellence. Although his research accomplishments elevated Ervin to the top of the scientific elite, perhaps his largest and most lasting impact was made by his outstanding mentorship of numerous students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members from around the world who went on to become successful researchers, faculty members, doctors and other scientific professionals. His friendship, kindness, generosity and compassionate support will be truly missed.

Ervin was a proud naturalized American citizen, who cherished the opportunity to live in this great nation in freedom, having witnessed and survived the Holocaust and oppression under both the Nazis and Communists

He is survived by his wife Sara Rabito of Chicago, Illinois, son Peter Andor Erdoes, daughter-in-law Kimberly Erdoes, grandson Dirk Ervin Erdoes, and granddaughter Erin Erdoes of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and son Philip Erdoes, daughter-in-law Mary Erdoes and granddaughters, Mia Erdoes, Morgan Erdoes and Mason Erdoes of New York City, New York. He is preceded in death by his son, Martin Erdoes.

A service will be held on November 22nd at 10:00 a.m. at the Weinstein and Piser Funeral Home in Wilmette, Illinois. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you make a donation, should you so choose, to the National Holocaust Museum.