Paediatrics in the Warsaw Ghetto: an attempt to conceptualise the problem Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych
T
he data preserved in Główna Biblioteka Lekarska, Poland’s central medical library,1 show that in the first year of the War there were over a hundred paediatricians in Warsaw who said they were Jewish. When an enclosed
Jewish quarter was set up in Warsaw many of them moved there to continue their professional activities on behalf of children. This paper is an attempt to take a closer look at paediatrics in the Ghetto and the paediatricians whose lot it was to “practise in superhuman medicine,”2 in far from normal conditions. And there
About the author: Agnieszka Witkowska-Krych is a cultural anthropologist, Hebraist, and sociologist. She graduated from the University of Warsaw with a degree in Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in the Humanities and gained another degree from the Collegium Civitas, Warsaw. Her PhD dissertation (defended in January 2021) is on the fate of the orphaned children in the Warsaw Ghetto. For many years Witkowska-Krych has worked at the research centre of the Museum of Warsaw. She is currently employed in the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw and in the Jewish Historical Institute. She has published a number of academic and educational articles on the history and culture of the Polish Jews. She is the author of the 2019 book Mniej strachu. Ostatnie chwile z Januszem Korczakiem [Less fear. The last moments of Janusz Korczak], awarded with the KLIO prize for the best book on history.
1
The historical collections of this library are housed in Warsaw, in the buildings of the former Ujazdowski Hospital at Jazdów 1.
2
This was the expression used by Dr Adina Blady-Szwajgier, a paediatrician who worked in the Bersohn and Bauman Hospital in the Ghetto. See her book (Polish edition, Blady-Szwajgier,
