Alan A. Brown

Alan A. Brown (born Andor Braun, March 20, 1928 – March 22, 2010) was a Hungarian professor of Economics. He founded the international honor society in Economics, Omicron Delta Epsilon (ODE), while he was a student at City College of New York (CCNY) in 1955. The society now has 600 chapters worldwide. Brown arrived in the U.S. in 1949 at age 21, having survived the Nazi Holocaust as the sole survivor of his family (except for three scattered cousins), without money or knowledge of English.

Alan Brown was born Andor Braun—commonly known as "Bandi"—to middle class parents, Erna Kallós Braun and Sándor Braun in Miskolc, Hungary, on March 20, 1928.

According to the Jewish custom, he was named for his uncle Andor, who died before he was born. Andor’s grave was one of very few graves that exist in Alan’s family. The Holocaust, which took many other lives in his family, did not allow for proper burial of one’s kin.

A day before Alan’s 16th birthday, the German Nazis came to Miskolc. In his personal testimony on YouTube, Alan states, "On June 6, 1944, D-Day with the German defeat rapidly approaching, our ghetto in Miskolc was liquidated." Jewish men lined up in front of a Hungarian bilingual guard (which he called a kapo, derived from the German word for “head,” although he was perhaps "a Schwab or Volksdeutsche, that is, an ethnic German that lived in Hungary for a long time"). The Schwab sat at a table and took roll call, categorizing males. Unknown to the men, their age determined whether they’d live or die, with the cut-off being age 18. The Schwab most likely knew that to be 16 years old was more dangerous for him than if he were deported as an 18-year-old in Hungarian forced labor. As a monolingual German Nazi closely scrutinized the interactions, the Schwab quizzed Alan, next in line – "Age?" Alan replied his true age: "16." For an unknown reason, the Schwab countered "18." Alan, baffled, corrected him: "16." This went on a few times until the Schwab said in Hungarian, "Do I have to teach you how to lie?" Thus, Alan’s first miracle: his life was saved for the first time in his years during and after the Holocaust.

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