Richmond Times-Dispatch

Saturday, December 6, 2003

Barred by the Nazis from attending German universities because he was Jewish, Breslau-born Henry K. Silberman was forced to leave Germany to obtain post-high school training.

Dr. Silberman, who would eventually graduate from the New York School of Medicine in 1950 and serve during the 1970s as a professor and acting chairman of psychiatry at what is now VCU Medical Center, died Wednesday in a Henrico County health-care center. He was 88.

He went to Bern, Switzerland, and then to Italy, where he studied in Florence and then at the University of Bologna, where he attended medical school. After five years, as fascist fanaticism swept through Italy, he was expelled from school because he was Jewish in 1938, one year short of graduation.

With the help of a Vatican secretary, he secured papers that allowed him to travel to Portugal, where he was imprisoned until he received a rare visa to the United States several months later.

He came to Richmond in 1972 to accept a psychiatry professorship at Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical College of Virginia. From 1976 until he retired in 1977, he served as acting chairman of the school's psychiatry department.

He came to the United States in 1940, soon was drafted into the Army and received a battlefield promotion to second lieutenant after the Battle of the Bulge. Ironically, he was part of the military government that helped re-establish post-World War II civilian rule in Germany.

Dr. Silberman, whose special interests included geriatric psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine, represented the Psychiatric Society of Virginia at the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association for two three-year terms.

In retirement, he was a consultant to what now is the McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Little Sisters of the Poor and the Masonic Home of Virginia.

Dr. Silberman was the psychiatric consultant on the first St. Mary's Hospice Team.

Before coming to Virginia, he served a residency at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, served a tour of duty in Germany and was stationed at Walter Reed Medical Hospital, now Walter Reed Medical Center, in Washington from 1959 to 1965. He served as Walter Reed's chief of psychiatry before his retirement from the Army.

Coming out of the Army, he became director of the Mid-Missouri Community Mental Health Center in Columbia, Mo., and then associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

Dr. Silberman received the Army's Legion of Merit and was given Fort Lee's Outstanding Civilian Service Medal in 1990.

Survivors include his wife of 53 years, Janina Jonas Silberman; a son, Ralph Michael Silberman of Arlington; two daughters, Shirley Ann Silberman of Richmond and Eleanor Rose Silberman of Santa Rosa, Calif.; and two grandchildren.

The family has no plans for a memorial service. Burial will be at Arlington National Cemetery.

- Ellen Robertson