Maria Ciesielska

The work presents the activities of institutions providing medical care to Jewish survivors soon after the end of II world war within the borders of post-war Poland. The health situation of former prisoners of concentration camps and the scope of the assistance provided are described on the basis of accounts and memories of former prisoners and doctors, as well as available studies. An attempt has also been made to outline the activities of institutions entrusted with the task of caring for the health of the survivors, such as: the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population in Poland (TOZ) and the Department for Aid to the Jewish Population. The first results of research on the effects of chronic starvation in concentration camps and attempts to optimize treatment are also described. The need for nutrition and the treatment of infectious diseases came to the fore.

Amelia Greenwald and the Nursing School at the Old Jewish Hospital at Czyste in Warsaw

The American nurse Amelia Greenwald was the creator and first director of the Jewish School of Nursing at the Old Jewish Hospital in Warsaw. During World War I she served in the American Expeditionary Corps fi ghting in Europe and was a member of the American Red Cross. In 1923, Greenwald received a proposal to create and run one of the most modern educational institutions training nurses in Warsaw, Poland. The school was founded thanks to the efforts of the American-Jewish Medical Affairs Committee of the Joint Distribution Committee, also known as Joint and the Society for Supporting the School of Nurses at the Old Jewish Hospital in Warsaw. The history of the school created by Greenwald has already been described by Zofia Podgórka-Klawe and Iwona Kowalkowska. The first of them outlined the functioning of the institution based on the prospectus of the School of Nursing developed in 1928 by the then director Sabina Schindlerówna. The second author also reviewed the medical press and described the wartime period of the school and the fate of its graduates. This article focuses on the character of the first headmistress of the School and her work on establishing the institution. As the main source base, documents collected in the Archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC Archives) were used and made available on the website https://archives.jdc.org. The author has translated some documents from English to Polish to present the history of the Nursing School at the Old Jewish Hospital in Warsaw.

In the early 1920s, tuberculosis, trachoma and ringworm (favus) were recognized by the Society for the Protection of Jewish Health (Общество адравоохранения Евреев, OZE) and the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC). Joint) for the three most pressing health problems of the Jewish community in Central and Eastern Europe, the most urgent of which, according to these institutions, was the fi ght against ringworm - a fungal disease of the scalp, sometimes also of the skin of the hands and nails, caused by the Achorion (Trichophyton) Scheonlenii fungus. Treatment of favus consisted of irradiating the affected area with X-rays in order to completely epilate the hair and subsequent treatment with topical agents. In the third decade of the twentieth century, epilation with the use of tall acetate as an “internal epilatory” and a combined method combining both methods of hair epilation were included in the treatment of mycosis of the scalp. The combined method was considered ineffective and was not introduced into the clinics of TOZ. In the years 1921–1938, over 27,000 patients (Jewish children) were successfully treated in Eastern Europe. Eradication was was the goal of TOZ’s activities in Poland from the very beginning although it seems doubtful that until the outbreak of World War II it was possible to eradicate this disease in Poland. Nevertheless the success of the mass campaign to eradicate ringworm among the Jewish community in Poland was undeniable.