Judith Balogh
Judith Olga Györgypály Balogh, M.D., 92, of Lincoln, MA passed away on October 30, 2022. Judith had celebrated 67 years of marriage to Károly Balogh, M.D.
Dr. Balogh was born in Budapest, Hungary. The daughter of the director of the largest flour mill in Hungary, Judith, an only child, was raised to be an independent person. In her youth, shortly before World War II impacted Hungary, her family moved to their farm in the countryside in an attempt to be spared the ravages of war in the city.
In 1954, Judith graduated from Semmelweis Medical School in Budapest. As a medical student she was an extern in the Department of Physiology and was the coauthor of a publication on renal function in shock. She met Károly Balogh when they were both medical students, and they were married in January 1955. After her compulsory military service, she started her training in psychiatry at the National Institute of Neurology and Psychiatry in Budapest.
Shortly after the October 1956 Soviet invasion, Judith and Károly escaped the communist occupation by fleeing separately to Austria. Successfully reuniting in Vienna, the young doctor couple traveled to the United States on an International Rescue Committee chartered flight. The pilot tilted the plane to show the Hungarians the Statue of Liberty. They entered the U.S. through Camp Kilmer, NJ, and received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and posting at the Tulane Medical School in New Orleans. After a year in New Orleans, Judith and Károly packed their VW bug and moved to Boston. They first lived in Boston, then moved to Cambridge and started a family. They settled in 1971 in Lincoln, where they raised their children and have lived since.
In 1962, Dr. Judith Balogh completed her training as chief resident in psychiatry at Boston City Hospital, then was on the staff of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center as a child and adolescent psychiatrist. For ten years, she served as chief of Pediatric Psychiatry at Cambridge City Hospital. Judith marveled at the resilience of children faced with harsh and stressful situations. As part of her psychiatric training, Judith underwent psychoanalysis with the renowned psychiatrist Helene Deutsch, M.D., the last member of Freud’s original Viennese School of Psychoanalysts.
Judith took great joy in helping her patients and seeing them flourish after treatment. As a young psychiatrist in Budapest, she treated a young woman with schizophrenia, remaining by her side during the patient’s shock therapy. The patient was cured. Many of Judith’s patients remained in touch with her, decades after their treatment.
Judith and Károly had three children, Adam, Peter, and Anna. Judith made raising her family a priority. Judith and Károly have three grandchildren, Charlotte, Eva, and Alexander. Judith and Károly shared their athletic passions and love of the outdoors with their children, including skiing as regular season ticket holders for many years at Pleasant Mountain in Maine. Since her childhood, Judith excelled in ice skating and won several competitions in gymnastics.
In addition to music, art and culture in general, Judith was passionate about collecting and reading books and newspaper articles on a multitude of subjects, and she filled stacks of notebooks with her own thoughts, analysis, and story ideas. Growing up as a practical person during the uncertain times of World War II and Soviet occupation of her native country, Judith chose medicine, but had times been different, admitted she likely would have pursued a literary career.
Anyone who met Judith remembers her Hungarian accent, kindness, energy, directness, courage and wisdom. She is oftentimes remembered for her youthful exploits. Notably, as a two-year old, when her mother took an afternoon nap after a large Sunday meal, Judith would use her thumb and forefinger to pry open the eyes of her sleeping mother. A lively five-year-old child, Judith would intentionally skate through the joined arms of couples. As a 14-year old on her family’s farm during the war when the farm’s horses were requisitioned by the occupying German soldiers, she had to present the horses at the collection point. After the German veterinarian examined the horses, Judith simply drove off with Flóra and Fácán (Flora and Pheasant).
Soon came the Soviet occupying soldiers. Judith, along with many of the village females, were hidden in haylofts to avoid rape. When she spotted a Soviet soldier taking Flóra, she ran out of hiding, grabbed the bridle of the horse on which the soldier sat, and pulled him off. Fortunately she was not shot or raped. At her first encounter with a Soviet soldier she was puzzled when he reached down to take her pulse. Thus she lost her wristwatch but saved Flóra a second time and survived to tell the story. At a tense point in the war when the Soviets were entering the village, some Germans were still present at the other end. Had the Soviets realized this, the entire village would have been killed for hiding them. Judith ran through the thick mud of the village to tell the Germans to leave, saving the village. She was interviewed as part of the Hungarian 1956 Memory Project.
Her adventurous nature never subsided. Well into her fifties, when her car broke down and a young male motorcycle rider offered her a ride to the nearest gas station, ever the sportslady, she thought nothing of getting on the back of the motorbike.
A graveside service for family and local friends was held on Friday, November 4th at the Lincoln Cemetery. A Celebration of Life for the family and friends will be held at a future date.
The Balogh family wishes to acknowledge their gratitude to the staff at the Waltham Crossing Benchmark facility and Caring Hospice Services where Judith spent her final days in their compassionate care.
In lieu of flowers, please consider honoring the memory of Dr. Judith G. Balogh with a donation to the BrightFocus Foundation’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research fund (22512 Gateway Center Drive, Clarksburg, MD 20871); Special Olympics (512 Forest St., Marlborough, MA 01752); or, Reach Out and Read (89 South St., Suite. 201, Boston, MA 02111).
Arrangements are under the care of Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord, which provided this obituary. Readers are invited to leave a note on her online tribute wall.