HEALTH & FITNESS
wellness

A Duty from page A29

and anxiety" Psychiatric help is still
a taboo among many older adults, he
says.
Life in assisted living, a nursing
home or hospital is closely controlled,
Ruza says. "People tell you what to
do!' For seniors in general, and for
survivors in particular, he says, "a lot
of issues come up with their loss of
independence. They can rebel."
The survivor mentality is "you
always have got to have something
stored away. Survivors are very regi-
mented!'

Steven M. Lash, DDS, MS
Rebecca L. Rubin, DMD, MS

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A30 July 31 • 2008

JN

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In Response
As a physician and as a psychiatrist,
Ruza says, "It's an obligation, a neces-
sity, a duty to help them. You have
to provide psychiatric services for
Holocaust survivors, whether they can
pay for it or not!'
His Botsford colleagues say that
Ruza is as caring of the families who
must watch their loved ones decline as
he is of the patients.
"T.J. works extremely well with
patients and their families," says Dr.
Kenneth Gallmore, an internist who
lives in Commerce. "He really cares
about people. You can't fake that!'
Dr. Steven Katzman, a geriatric
internist from West Bloomfield, calls
Ruza, "very caring, very empathetic.
I've seen a lot of psychiatrists who
aren't. He's a great communicator!'
Ruza, who lives in West Bloomfield,
was thinking cardiology when he
graduated Southfield-Lathrup High
School and Oakland University and
headed for the Des Moines University
College of Osteopathic Medicine.
A summer rotation under his psy-
chiatrist uncle, Dr. Gerald Shiener,
M.D., at Sinai Grace Hospital in Detroit
changed his mind. He completed a
residency in psychiatry at Sinai Grace,
started working at Botsford and added
a board certification in geriatrics (see
vital statistics).
His father-in-law, Jack Gun, also
influenced Ruza, but in a different
way. Gun was a hidden child, who is a
frequent speaker as well as a docent
at the Holocaust Memorial Center in
Farmington Hills.
But when Ruza met Gun while dat-
ing Gun's daughter, Sandra, back in
high school, his future father-in-law
was silent on the topic.
"When I was a kid, I tried to put
it on the backburner," Gun, a West
Bloomfield resident, says. "Most people
weren't interested to hear it. When my

own children were teenagers, I still
wasn't ready to talk.
"I used to send them off [to talk] to
my brother. Thanks to him, I lived!"

Marital Bonds
Anszel Gun, then 17, and Jack, then
8, hid in the forests of eastern Poland
from August 1942 to April 1944, when
they were liberated by the Russians.
They lost both parents and a sister.
"I'm 74 and I'm afraid to sleep home
alone," Jack Gun says. "I'm very afraid
of close places. I don't like to go in
an elevator by myself. All of us have
something — some big, some small!'
His father-in-law's story "made me
more aware of the needs of survivors:'
Ruza says.
He also sees a different psycho-
logical profile between concentration
camp survivors and hidden children.
"I think it must be very hard for a
non-Jew to be as empathetic!"

Aging brings
bacK t h e
Holocaust
experience,
Drr Ruza says,

"He appreciates things more know-
ing what I went through:' Gun says.
"He is also very close to my brother"
By contrast, Ruza once treated a
patient who was a former Nazi. "Peter
was an older manic depressive who
was one of Hitler's Youth."
The man, who died last year, immi-
grated to the United States in the
1950s, worked for Ford Motor Co. and
eventually "ended up in a psychiatric
ward:' but with the caveat that he
didn't want any Jewish doctors treat-
ing him.
Ruza was initially reluctant to do
so. "The reason I stuck by him is that
I wanted him to understand that just
because he was a Nazi, I wasn't going
to turn my back on him."
At a certain point, Peter was able
to say that he was brought up to hate
Jews, Ruza says. "He did show remorse
and regret. I had to latch onto some-
thing to be able to treat him. He came
full circle because, in the end, all of his
doctors were Jewish.
"That was a tough one." ❑