Anselm (Anczel) Horowitz grew up in Buczacz as the eldest of presumably four children of the couple Fishel Horowitz and Sofia, née Rapp. His later wife Eva, née Markowicz (1898-1971) was a cousin of Simon Wiesenthal (1809-2005).1
After graduating from the I State High School in Czernowitz, Horowitz served in World War I as a medic in the Austrian army. He went to Vienna to study medicine in 1919. He received his license to practice medicine five years later and was awarded his doctorate on July 13, 1925, after passing three rigorous exams.2
The Causa Park Sanatorium Bad Goisern
Horowitz acquired the Park Sanatorium in Bad Goisern together with Jeanette Markowicz in 1927 and took over its management. In the years that followed, he was increasingly targeted by anti-Semitic hostility and, after the "Anschluss" (the annexation) of Austria in March 1938, found himself exposed to a targeted policy of persecution and expropriation. Horowitz was forced to abandon the sanatorium as he was a "Jewish owner." In order to be able to "Aryanize [the sanatorium] as soon as possible," the municipality appointed a provisional administrator as of June 1. Among the prospective buyers was the former infantry general Alfred Krauss (1862-1938), who wanted to convert the Park Sanatorium into an "Aryan warriors' recreation home" and in a letter to the municipality dated April 5, 1938, had already recommended "eliminating the Jewish owner". 3Horowitz was expropriated with reference to the "Ordinance on the Use of Jewish Property". Official expatriation proceedings were initiated on June 16, 1941.4
Escape to Great Britain
Horowitz fled to Great Britain together with his wife Eva, who until then had practiced as a dentist in Bad Goisern, and their two children Martin (1927-1999) and Erika (*1933) in August 1938. The family initially stayed in Castletown, Isle of Man, with the parents of the British medical student F.W. Sheperd, who Horowitz had met during his studies abroad in Vienna.5 Despite objections from the local medical profession, which cited an already prevailing surplus of doctors, Horowitz was granted permission to sit the examinations necessary for obtaining the British license to practice medicine in Scotland.6 In preparation for the British examination, he worked for a few months as an assistant physician at the Royal Infirmary Sheffield from April 1939. He was awarded his medical licentiate by the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow on November 8, 1940. He then settled as a doctor in Murray's Road, Douglas (Isle of Man).7
Horowitz took over a practice in Ellesmere, Woodbourne Road, Douglas, in 1942 and worked as a general practitioner.8 It seems that he did not realize his original plans to become a specialist in rheumatology after the end of the Second World War. The practice employed his wife Eva as medical assistant and Henriette Rose (1896-1962), who had also fled Austria, as surgery assistant nurse.9
Horowitz and his family were granted British citizenship in April 1947. Horowitz was a member of the British Medical Society. He died at the age of 55 and was buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Long Lane, Liverpool.10
Eva Horowitz took over the practice on an interim basis after her husband's death. She moved to Caterham near London in 1952 and resumed work as a dentist at the Eastman Clinic. Their son Martin studied medicine in Cambridge and Manchester and qualified as an ear, nose, and throat doctor (1962 member and fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons). Their daughter Erika qualified as a dentist in Castletown after having studied at the University of Liverpool.11
