Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust

Michael A. Grodin, M.D.

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781785333484
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782384182
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword: Three Kinds of Medical Resistance
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 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
• Chapter 2 — Typhus Epidemic Containment as Resistance to Nazi Genocide
• Chapter 3 — Delousing and Resistance during the Holocaust
• Part II — Organized Health Care in the Ghettos
• Chapter 4 — Courage under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto
• Chapter 5 — Jewish Medical Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto
• Chapter 6 — Health Care in the Vilna Ghetto
• Chapter 7 — The Jewish Hospital in the Vilna Ghetto
• Chapter 8 — The Establishment of a Public Health Service in the Vilna Ghetto
• Chapter 9 — Medicine in the Kovno Ghetto
• Chapter 10 — Medicine in the Shavli Ghetto: In Light of the Newly Discovered Diary of Dr. Aaron Pik
• Chapter 11 — The Nursing School in the Warsaw Ghetto
• Chapter 12 — A Tribute to an Old-Fashioned Pharmacist
• Part III — Medicine in the Camps
• Chapter 13 — Jewish Medical Resistance in Block 10, Auschwitz
• Chapter 14 — Greek Jews in Auschwitz: Doctors and Victims
• Chapter 15 — The Kinderheim of Bergen-Belsen
• Chapter 16 — Memoirs of Heroic Deeds by Jewish Medical Personnel in the Camps
• Chapter 17 — Felix Bachmann's Medical Memoir of Terezín Concentration Camp
• Part IV — Wartime Activities and Other Areas
• Chapter 18 — Doctors Saving Jews in Dniepropetrovsk during the Nazi Occupation
• Chapter 19 — Crimean Doctors: Victims of Holocaust and Heroes of Resistance
• Chapter 20 — Jewish Medics in the Soviet Partisan Movement in the Ukraine
• Afterword: The Ethical and Human Dimension of Jewish Medical Resistance during the Holocaust
• Photos
• Contributors
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Glossary
• Selected Bibliography: Suggested Further Reading
• Index