Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust

Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust JEWISH MEDICAL RESISTANCE IN THE HOLOCAUST 5 Edited by Michael A. Grodin berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com Published in 2014 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2014 Michael A. Grodin All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jewish medical resistance in the Holocaust / edited by Michael A. Grodin. pages cm Includes index. ISBN 978-1-78238-417-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78238-418-2 (ebook) 1. Jews—Medicine—History—20th century. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Medical care. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Personal narratives—History and criticism. 4. Jewish physicians—Biography. 5. Jewish ghettos—History—20th century. 6. Jews—Europe, Eastern—Social conditions—20th century. 7. World War, 1939– 1945—Jewish resistance. I. Grodin, Michael A., editor of compilation. II. Winick, Myron, author. Jewish medical resistance in the Warsaw ghetto. R694.J49 2014 610.9409’044—dc23 2014009645 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed on acid-free paper ISBN: 978-1-78238-417-5 hardback ISBN: 978-1-78238-418-2 ebook We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph. —Elie Wiesel, foreword to The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code A last few words to honor you, the Jewish doctors. What can I tell you, my beloved colleagues and companions in misery? You are a part of all of us. Slavery, hunger, deportation, those death fi gures in our ghetto were also part of your legacy. And you by your work could give the henchmen the answer “Non omnis moriar,” “I shall not wholly die.” —Dr. Izrael Milejkowski, introduction to Hunger Disease: Studies by the Jewish Physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto Contents 5 Foreword. Three Kinds of Medical Resistance x Joseph Polak Preface xiv Michael A. Grodin and Allan Nadler Acknowledgments xviii Introduction 1 Michael A. Grodin Part I. Hygiene and Disease Containment as Resistance 1. The Epidemiological Status and Health-Care Administration of the Jews before and during the Holocaust 13 Jacob Jay Lindenthal 2. Typhus Epidemic Containment as Resistance to Nazi Genocide 39 Naomi Baumslag and Barry M. Shmookler 3. Delousing and Resistance during the Holocaust 49 Paul Weindling Part II. Organized Health Care in the Ghettos 4. Courage under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto 59 Charles G. Roland 5. Jewish Medical Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto 93 Myron Winick 6. Health Care in the Vilna Ghetto 106 Solon Beinfeld vii viii Contents 7. The Jewish Hospital in the Vilna Ghetto 141 Alexander Sedlis 8. The Establishment of a Public Health Service in the Vilna Ghetto 148 Steven P. Sedlis 9. Medicine in the Kovno Ghetto 155 Jack Brauns 10. Medicine in the Shavli Ghetto: In Light of the Diary of Dr. Aaron Pik 164 Miriam Offer 11. The Nursing School in the Warsaw Ghetto 173 Aleksander Blum 12. A Tribute to an Old-Fashioned Pharmacist 178 Lily Mazur Margules Part III. Medicine in the Camps 13. Jewish Medical Resistance in Block 10, Auschwitz 185 Claude Romney 14. Greek Jews in Auschwitz: Doctors and Victims 197 Yitzchak Kerem 15. The Kinderheim of Bergen-Belsen 206 Diane Plotkin 16. Memoirs of Heroic Deeds by Jewish Medical Personnel in the Camps 219 Isak Arbus 17. Felix Bachmann’s Medical Memoir of Terezín Concentration Camp 227 Oliver B. Pollak Part IV. Wartime Activities and Other Areas 18. Doctors Saving Jews in Dniepropetrovsk during the Nazi Occupation 249 Alexander Bielostotzki and Arkady Bielostotzki Contents ix 19. Crimean Doctors: Victims of Holocaust and Heroes of Resistance 254 Gitel Gubenko 20. Jewish Medics in the Soviet Partisan Movement in the Ukraine 261 Ster Elisavetski Afterword. The Ethical and Human Dimension of Jewish Medical Resistance during the Holocaust 267 Yulian Rafes Photos 275 Notes on Contributors 285 List of Abbreviations and Acronyms 290 Glossary 291 Selected Bibliography 293 Index 295 Foreword Three Kinds of Medical Resistance Joseph Polak 5 DR. NORDHEIM In 1940, once the Netherlands had capitulated to the onslaught of the Weh- rmacht, the Germans wasted no time in setting up a Schutzstaffel (SS)-led civil administration based in Amsterdam. Unsurprisingly, one of its fi rst items of business was the liquidation of the Jews. Jews soon found them- selves rounded up and sent, in groups small and large, to the Westerbork transit camp, a merciless, raw, windswept heath in northern Holland, from whence prisoners were “sent east,” and for the most part, never heard from again. This eventually became the fate of close to 100,000 of Holland’s 135,000 Jews, constituting the highest percentage of Jewish victims of any European country besides Greece. The sign affi xed to the front of the engine of one of the trains which transported this doomed human cargo is today calmly displayed in the Dutch pavilion in the museum at Auschwitz II (Birkenau). It reads “WESTERBORK-AUSCHWITZ.” The lists of the Jews—their names, dates of birth, addresses, and occu- pations (no phone numbers, because Jews were no longer allowed to use telephones) were provided to the SS by the Nazi-appointed Jewish gov- erning body of the ghetto, called Judenräte. The Judenrat was headed by two men, Abraham Asscher, a prominent Amsterdam businessman; and David Cohen, professor of ancient history at the Municipal University of Amsterdam. Panic swept through Dutch Jewry. Westerbork became a dread-word, a terrifying destiny, and thousands of Jews who could, went into hiding. Other x Foreword xi ways were also found to prevent, or at least forestall, arrival at the Camp. One of these was medical: if you were sick, certainly with any kind of com- municable disease, you could get an offi cial suspension of your inevitable journey. David Nordheim was a Jewish physician in Amsterdam who, once he was made aware of the possibility of this reprieve, wasted no time. He became what we today might call a veritable Sugihara, fi lling desperate days and nights that seemed too short, composing thousands of illness-certifi cates for all who knocked on his door. Dr. Nordheim did not survive the war; together with hundreds of thousands of others, he succumbed quietly to typhus and malnutrition in the late spring of 1945. More than fi fty years after his death, I met his widow in Jerusalem, who told me another detail of the story. The SS got wise to him, she related, and in no time he received a phone call from Dr. Cohen of the Judenrat. “You must stop writing these certifi cates,” Cohen admonished him. “Our only chance to survive this war is by co-operating with the Nazis as much as possible.” She told me this with a contempt in her voice for Cohen that was laced with a bitter sadness. Cohen survived the Holocaust. DR. SPANIER Westerbork had an incredible hospital. Over a thousand beds, operating theaters, a pharmacy, an outstanding staff of nurses and physicians, weekly seminars given by the doctors, an oasis in a camp that waited in terror each Monday night to hear who was on tomorrow’s list of deportees. Hospitalized patients, however, were not sent to the east. Dr. F.M. Spanier was the medical director of this hospital, and it was he who decided who was admitted. Spanier was a Jew, one of the hapless victims of the ship called the St. Louis, a native of Düsseldorf, and a prewar friend of the Nazi commandant of Westerbork, Albert Konrad Gemmeker. During the course of a patient’s hospital stay, as we said, he was not sent to the east; it was not unusual, though, for a patient to get sick, go to the hospital, recover fully, and fi nd himself on a train to Auschwitz the next day. The hospital was intended to create the strong impression among the mostly Jewish prisoners that the Nazis were committed to their welfare, that they cared about them and meant to treat them well. This illusion was enor- mously helpful when it came to the weekly exercise of fi lling a train with one to two thousand people, who were for the most part now convinced that they were headed for a better place where their skills and labor were needed for xii Foreword the war effort. Transporting one hundred thousand prisoners, week after week, to Auschwitz, Sobibor, or Bergen-Belsen—which was the central pur- pose of the Camp—was as a result accomplished with an eerie smoothness, virtually no violence, and minimal hysteria. Spanier was very good about allowing healthy people to live in the hospital in order to delay their deportation; he took care of the real patients, yet kept the healthy people there as long as he could. Moreover, while in the hospital, most prisoners were treated with some respect and dignity. I have also not heard that anyone besides Dr. Spanier verifi ed the patient logs—who was admitted, or how long they lingered. But in deciding whom he would admit to the hospital, and whom he would not, and in deciding how long a patient could stay, Dr.

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