April 2, 1924

Leonard H. Ehrlich (April 2, 1924 to June 8, 2011) was one of the scholars whose presence graced the American academic stage, although the pattern in the curtains hinted at the horrors of 20th century Germany. 

Most of his immediate family obtained visas for the US shortly after the war began. Leonard H. Ehrlich soon returned to Germany as a medic in the US army. There Leonard Ehrlich was "a certified hero. "

We quote from his son's eulogy:

A man of self-effacing modesty and bravery, he was awarded both a Purple Heart for being wounded and a Silver Star for bravery in action, quite a feat for a non-combatant. Indeed, he was recommended for a second Silver Star, which he turned down because he had already won one, something for which my mother never forgave him, since the points that would have accrued to him on its account would have brought him home from the war a month earlier...

After the war and:

Following a few years of hard work, my parents went to pursue graduate studies in Psychology in Basel, Switzerland, returning to Europe in part to see whether any members of their extended families had survived. Unfortunately, the survivors were few and far between.... [A]s part of their program, my parents were required to take a course in Philosophy. It was to prove a life-changing experience, as they became disciples of philosopher Karl Jaspers, after whom I may or may not be named—my father was always coy about answering this question— and to whose philosophy my father in particular was to dedicate his scholarly career. Like his teacher, my father combined a sharp intellectual and personal honesty with a deep moral sense that in both cases is their greatest legacy: ..... Both Jaspers and my father shared an innate curiosity about what it means to be human; hence, they were people to whom the saying derived from Terence nihil humanum mihi alienum est ("nothing human is foreign to me") truly applies. And both Jaspers and my father were privileged and lucky to spend their lives with their soul-mates, their bashertes (as they say in Yiddish).

Once their meager funds had run out, my parents returned to the States, where a connection established through Jaspers led to their enrolment at Yale University, from which my father received his PhD in 1960. Four years previously (and just after my birth), he had accepted a position in the Philosophy Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. My parents jumped at the chance to move to New England, which reminded them of the forested terrain in Central Europe that had once been home to them and to which they returned innumerable times over the course of the years. Indeed, my father was to spend the whole of his academic career—except for the occasional guest-professorship—at U.Mass., not only teaching courses in Continental Philosophy but also as the founder and long-time director of the Judaic Studies Program (now the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies). Over the course of his thirty-five years at U.Mass., my parents raised their family, consisting of my sister Karin and me, my maternal grandmother as well as a dog and a seemingly infinite number of cats.

My father was a dedicated teacher and respected scholar, authoring and/or editing over a dozen books in both German and English, including his monumental magnum opus, Choices under the Duress of the Holocaust, which he coauthored with my mother and whose upcoming publication he unfortunately did not live to see.

In spite of his accomplished intellectual and professional life, there were other things that were as important to him if not more so. My father loved art, music, nature, Jause (the Viennese equivalent of afternoon tea), and also his daily glass of ice-cold beer, loves that he attempted to impart to his children.....My father was raised in an orthodox Jewish household. However, the tragedy of the Holocaust occasioned a theological estrangement from Judaism that lasted a number of years. While he never reclaimed his boyhood orthodoxy, he enthusiastically and publically embraced his Judaism: the survival of Judaism, of the Jewish people, of the Jewish state, and of Jewish scholarship belonging to the major factors motivating his life. ...

However, nothing in my father's life was more important to him than his family. He had come from a large family—his parents alone had six and thirteen siblings respectively—and the loss of most of his relatives during the Holocaust determined his zeal in tracking down and keeping in touch with the scattered remnants of his clan throughout the world. He was a loving yet demanding parent, whose pride in and devotion to his children was extended and transferred to his five grandsons. .....


....In closing we note some of the other books Leonard H. Ehrlich wrote:

The Production of College Teachers of Philosophy in New England: A Report of Research (1961).

Karl Jaspers today: philosophy at the threshold of the future, co-author (1988)

Karl Jaspers, philosopher among philosophers (1993) co-author, (with ‎Richard Wisser, in both cases.)