White Coats in the Ghetto
Jewish Medicine in Poland during the Holocaust
9789653086029
702 pages
Yad Vashem Publications
Overview
The book traces within a broad historical context the actions of the approximately 800 brave Jewish physicians, nurses, and other practitioners who strived to maintain the health of the Jewish population while risking their lives fighting two wars—against the Nazis and the death sentence that they imposed on the ghetto residents; and against the spread of epidemics. At the same time that the medical personnel contended with daunting professional and ethical challenges, they miraculously managed to conduct unique research on the diseases that they treated, and also to establish an underground medical school to train a new generation of Jewish physicians at great personal risk. In this pioneering study, Miriam Offer examines the unparalleled phenomenon of the establishment of the Jewish medical system in the Warsaw ghetto and in other ghettos during the Holocaust, and proposes historical explanations for its unique characteristics, shedding light on an important yet relatively unexplored subject that will be of great interest to both the medical community and the general public alike.Author Bio
Dr. Miriam Offer is a senior lecturer at Western Galilee College, Akko, Israel and teaches the History of Medicine during the Holocaust in the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Offer's research expertise is in Jewish medical activity during the Holocaust, and she is a partner in research and educational initiatives in this field. She is a member of the organizational scientific committee of the annual Nahariya Conferences on Medicine and the Holocaust, and is a scientific committee member for “Witnesses in White”—organized guided tours to Poland for physicians—under the auspices of the Israel Medical Association. Dr. Offer was a scholar-in-residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI) during the summer semester of 2017, and is currently a member of the HBI Academic Advisory Committee and a Research Associate. In this capacity, she is researching Jewish women's contribution to the medical services in the ghettos. She was one of the founders of the Hedva Eibschitz Institute for Holocaust Studies in Haifa, where she served as Director from 1988 to 1993, and has extensive experience in leading and developing Holocaust teaching programs and commemorative activities. Both in Israel and overseas, she lectures on Medicine and the Holocaust at international conferences and is a member of scientific committees dealing with the subject.