I Am the Storm

My Odyssey from the Holocaust to the Frontiers of Medicine

Morrell Michael Avram

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781510766457
• eBook ISBN:
  9781510766471
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

Morrell Avram, born in Bucharest, could have easily become one of the 200, 000 Romanian Jews killed by the German Nazis or their Romanian allies. I AM THE STORM is the riveting true story of how he survived—and later triumphed as a pioneering doctor—through a combination of grit and persistence.
At age 11, Avram was separated from his mother and baby sister because the US Embassy would only allow them to immigrate on the condition that they leave Morrell and his father behind. What the family hoped would be a brief separation became six terrifying years. Amid the horrors of the war, Morrell had to fend mostly for himself, shuttling from relative to relative, hiding place to hiding place. Among his close calls: He longed to buy a ticket on the Struma, a ship taking Jewish refugees from Romania to Palestine, that was torpedoed and sank along with many of his friends. He walked into his bar mitzvah ceremony with dozens of Nazi soldiers stationed outside the synagogue. He was strafed and nearly killed by an American warplane. Upon finally escaping Romania and reuniting with his mother and sister, Avram faced a host of new challenges in New York. After getting through high school with minimal English, he was thrilled to get into college but found it impossible to juggle classes while working to help support his family. By age 21, it looked as if his dream of becoming a doctor was doomed. But relief came from an unlikely source—a draft notice from the US Army, which transformed him from an anxious "subway rat" into a focused soldier, driven by the words of his drill sergeant: "You are the storm! You are invincible!" Avram's unlikely journey continued as a med student in Brussels and Geneva, as a young doctor in Brooklyn, and as one of the leaders of the new field of nephrology. He became a pathbreaking specialist in dialysis and kidney transplants, saving tens of thousands of patients personally and millions more through treatments he helped devise.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• DEDICATION
• PROLOGUE
• CHAPTER ONE: I Am the Storm
• CHAPTER TWO: Little Paris
• CHAPTER THREE: A World Gone Mad
• CHAPTER FOUR: The Iron Guard
• CHAPTER FIVE: The Ship of Death
• CHAPTER SIX: The World Will Not Allow It
• CHAPTER SEVEN: Staying on the Move
• CHAPTER EIGHT: Hiding in Plain Sight
• CHAPTER NINE: Setting Sail
• CHAPTER TEN: The Land of Vanilla Malteds
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: He’s a Very Kind Man
• CHAPTER TWELVE: Two Very Different Educations
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Dark Days
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Drafted
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN: We Need You to be Tough
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Great Equalizer
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Attack! Attack! Attack!
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Back to Europe
• CHAPTER NINETEEN: Following the Dream
• CHAPTER TWENTY: Tragedy and Triumph
• PHOTO INSERT
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: The Making of a Doctor
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Making of a Nephrologist
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Maria
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Breakthroughs
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: House Calls
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: A Very Big Gamble
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Success and Temptation
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Imperfect Matches
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Physician, Heal Thyself
• CHAPTER THIRTY: Home, Truly Home
• CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: The Wonders of the Kidney
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Terror Comes to New York
• CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: When Medicine Collides with Business and Politics
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Yet We Must Keep Pushing
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Diversity
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Fighting Parallel Pandemics
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: What I’ve Been Holding Back
• CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Proud to March
• CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: At the White House
• CHAPTER FORTY: Stormy Nightmares . . . and Dreams of Storms
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR