Description
Book Synopsis Faced with infectious diseases, starvation, lack of medicines, lack of clean water, and safe sewage, Jewish physicians practiced medicine under severe conditions in the ghettos and concentration camps of the Holocaust. Despite the odds against them, physicians managed to supply public health education, enforce hygiene protocols, inspect buildings and latrines, enact quarantine, and perform triage. Many gave their lives to help fellow prisoners. Based on archival materials and featuring memoirs of Holocaust survivors, this volume offers a rich array of both tragic and inspiring studies of the sanctification of life as practiced by Jewish medical professionals. More than simply a medical story, these histories represent the finest exemplification of a humanist moral imperative during a dark hour of recent history.
Trade Review “The 20 chapters in this four-part volume are well researched, based extensively on primary sources, and highly readable. This book should be read by anyone interested in understanding more about resistance to the Holocaust and the complex roles that medicine played in defying the genocidal intentions of the ‘Final Solution’.” · Choice
“The essays in this volume are of uniform quality… [It] is must read for any scholars interested in the complex and often contradictory details of medicine in the world of the Holocaust.” · Modern Judaism
“[This book] is more than simply a medical story. It is one of the most heroic and moving accounts of the Holocaust this reviewer has ever read.” · Jewish Book Council Review
“[Grodin] compiled a fascinating series of articles documenting a little-known aspect of the Holocaust: medical resistance by Jewish physicians and health care workers… The articles cover a wide range of topics related to health care… [and] are fascinating to read. They inspire both compassion for those affected and awe of the courage of the health care professionals who risked their own lives to assist and save fellow Jews. Their sanctification of life, the core Jewish value, is duly honoured here. Libraries supporting programs in medical history, Holocaust studies, and bioethics will definitely want this book for their collections.” · Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews
“[A] brilliant scholarly piece of work, very well written, underpinned with rich sources. The list of authors - some of them survivors, or children of survivors - is impressive… The book covers a hitherto fairly new and unknown chapter on the Holocaust… The stories of these physicians can serve as a model for future generations of doctors on how to preserve humaneness, morality and loyalty to the basic ethical principles of medicine in a deeply inhumane and destructive environment.” · Christian Pross, Zentrum Überleben
“This is an interesting and important publication on Jewish medical resistance, a subject rarely covered in the literature on the Holocaust… the overall amount of information, the variety of approaches and the general insight given into this emotionally laden topic makes this volume unique and outstanding. And while the personal accounts as well as the scholarly data paint the picture of horrific suffering, they also leave the reader with hope in the realization of the nurses’ and doctors’ determination to alleviate suffering even under near impossible circumstances.” · Sabine Hildebrandt, Harvard Medical School
Table of Contents Foreword
Joseph Polak
Preface
Michael A. Grodin & Allan Nadler
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Michael A. Grodin
PART I: HYGIENE AND DISEASE CONTAINMENT AS RESISTANCE
Chapter 1. The Epidemiological Status and Health Care Administration of the Jews Before and During the Holocaust
Jacob Jay Lindenthal
Chapter 2. Typhus Epidemic Containment as Resistance to Nazi Genocide
Naomi Baumslag and Barry Shmookler
Chapter 3. Delousing and Resistance During the Holocaust
Paul Weindling
PART II: ORGANIZED HEALTH CARE IN THE GHETTOS
Chapter 4. Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto
Charles G. Roland
Chapter 5. Jewish Medical Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto
Myron Winick
Chapter 6. Health Care in the Vilna Ghetto
Solon Beinfeld
Chapter 7. The Jewish Hospital in the Vilna Ghetto
Alexander Sedlis
Chapter 8. The Establishment of a Public Health Service in the Vilna Ghetto
Steven Sedlis
Chapter 9. Medicine in the Kovno Ghetto
Jack Brauns
Chapter 10. Medicine in the Shavli Ghetto – In Light of the Newly Discovered Diary of Dr. Aaron Pik
Miriam Offer
Chapter 11. The Nursing School in the Warsaw Ghetto
Aleksander Blum
Chapter 12. A Tribute to an Old-Fashioned Pharmacist
Lily Mazur Margules
PART III: MEDICINE IN THE CAMPS
Chapter 13. Jewish Medical Resistance in Block 10, Auschwitz
Claude Romney
Chapter 14. Greek Jews in Auschwitz: Doctors and Victims
Yitzchak Kerem
Chapter 15. The Kinderheim of Bergen-Belsen
Diane Plotkin
Chapter 16. Memoirs of Heroic Deeds by Jewish Medical Personnel in the Camps
Isak Arbus
Chapter 17. Felix Bachmann’s Medical Memoir of Terezin Concentration Camp
Oliver B. Pollak
PART IV: WARTIME ACTIVITIES AND OTHER AREAS
Chapter 18. Doctors Saving Jews in Dniepropetrovsk During the Nazi Occupation
Alexander and Arkady Bielostotzk
Chapter 19. Crimean Doctors: Victims of Holocaust and Heroes of Resistance
Gitel Gubenko
Chapter 20. Jewish Medics in the Soviet Partisan Movement in the Ukraine
Ster Elisvatski
Afterword: The Ethical and Human Dimension of Jewish Medical Resistance During the Holocaust
Yulian Rafes
Photos
About the Editor
List of Contributors
Credits
Index
