Proceedings 2021 - Behind the Barbed Wire 2021

Page 133

Mitsuo Kaneda: the first doctor to translate Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim into Japanese Giichiro Ohno

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n 2019, I held a war and medicine workshop at the 27th International Conference on Health Promoting Hospitals and Health Services in Warsaw. Dr Maria Ciesielska gave a lecture at the Conference on a medical issue con-

cerning Auschwitz. Later, when she traveled to Japan, I asked her to speak about

Auschwitz at my hospital. Many young staff were impressed. At that time, she told me that there was a Japanese doctor who had produced a Japanese translation of a selection of articles on Auschwitz from Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim 40 years before. And she gave me some homework—to find out about that doctor. That is the story I am going to present today. Photo 1 is the Japanese volume. The translator was Dr Mitsuo Kaneda (Photo 2), a medical practitioner in Koganei, Tokyo. Around 1970, he received a copy of the 1962 edition of the Polish medical journal Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim compiled by

About the author: Giichiro Ohno, surgeon, deputy president of Tokatsu Hospital, Japan. Councilor of the Japanese Society for Social Medicine and officer of the Japanese Society for Research on War and Medical Science. Antarctic doctor, visiting professor of the National Institute of Polar Research and deputy chair of the Expert Group of Human Biology and Medicine in the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.


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