Maria Ciesielska: The Doctors of the Warsaw Ghetto. Translated by: Agata Krzychylkiewicz, Edited by: Tali Nates, Jeanette Friedman and Luc Albinski, Preface by: Michael Berenbaum. Academic Studies Press 2022. ISBN: 9781644697276

Maria Ciesielska: The Doctors of the Warsaw Ghetto. Translated by: Agata Krzychylkiewicz, Edited by: Tali Nates, Jeanette Friedman and Luc Albinski, Preface by: Michael Berenbaum. Academic Studies Press 2022. ISBN: 9781644697276

ABOUT THIS BOOK

An in-depth study based on personal narratives, diaries, and scientific research that engagingly captures history of doctors who performed their work in the Warsaw ghetto.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Ciesielska Maria:

Maria Ciesielska, MD, PhD, is head of the UNESCO Unit at the Faculty of Medicine at the University in Haifa and a renowned specialist in the history of medicine.NatesTali:

Tali Nates, founder and director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (a member of the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation), is a historian who has lectured internationally on Holocaust education, genocide prevention, reconciliation and human rights.AlbinskiLuc:

Luc Albinski is the co-founder of Vantage Capital’s mezzanine business which offers long-term, growth capital to mid-size businesses across Africa. Brought up in a Polish-Catholic home, Luc learnt about his Jewish origins in his early twenties. His interest in Holocaust and genocide history springs from his personal story as a son of a Holocaust survivor as well as from his on-the-ground involvement with a non-profit during the Bosnian conflict.Maria Ciesielska, MD, PhD, is head of the UNESCO Unit at the Faculty of Medicine at the University in Haifa and a renowned specialist in the history of medicine.

REVIEWS

“The Warsaw Ghetto is one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, ending with the Great Deportation to Treblinka’s gas chambers; at the same time, the Ghetto offers an empowering story of a new and resourceful system of medical care which was a form of sustained resistance to the Nazi occupation. Maria Ciesielska tells this story vividly: she offers many new insights into the Jewish physicians and nurses confined to the Ghetto. It is a narrative of hope in efforts to create a new system of healthcare, and of dark violence from the Nazi authorities in their determination to destroy the Ghetto. The culmination is the heroic resistance of the Ghetto Uprising. We are offered a vivid and authoritative narrative with many new and often touching insights in the efforts to overcome epidemics and starvation. Dr. Ciesielska has created a lucidly written and inspiring book.”

—Paul Weindling, Research Professor in the History of Medicine,Oxford Brookes University

“This remarkable book depicts the heroic efforts which the Warsaw Ghetto doctors deployed to protect the inhabitants from epidemics and treat them if they were sick. Weakened by starvation, overcrowding, catastrophic hygienic conditions and diseases, most Ghetto residents did not survive. Many also perished in death camps. The Ghetto medical community was also almost completely wiped out. The author studied accounts by surviving physicians and provides a chronological history of the Ghetto medical organization, interspersed with portraits of Ghetto doctors. The book offers many examples of doctors’ altruism and self-sacrifice. Their exact number is unknown, but Dr. Ciesielska lists the names of over 700 of them. Their tragic and often heroic stories will now be available to English readers, both in the medical community and in the general population interested in the history of the Warsaw Ghetto.”

—Claude Romney, Professor Emerita, University of Calgary

“Dr. Maria Ciesielska’s account of the Jewish doctors in the Warsaw Ghetto adds an important dimension to the existing material, but this is not just another historical account. Dr Ciesielska’s meticulous, detailed, and comprehensive use of many personal memoirs and testimonies to document their lives, and their deaths, provides a special lens through we which we can learn and understand more about the personal stories of those doctors, nurses, and pharmacists who worked and lived under those dire and extreme circumstances in the Ghetto. Through her unique way of storytelling, Dr. Ciesielska provides us with a humanistic glimpse into the complexities of the daily lives of these Jewish victims, and the ethical and moral complexities that they faced as healthcare professionals. This is a work of devotion to the memory of these individuals.”

—Dr. Tessa Chelouche, M.D.