22 Friday, September 29, 1978 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Warsaw Ghetto Doctors Sought to Aid Jews Gage Oldsmobile inc. By BEN GALLOB (Copyright 1978, JTA, Inc.) May The Coming NEW YEAR Be Filled With Health, Peace and Prosperity For All 21710 Woodward ( 6 blks N. of 8 Mile) 399-3200 A medical symposium on semi-starvation held at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Manhattan on the theme, "Remembering the Doctors of the Warsaw Ghetto," heard a series of reports on the little known use by the Nazis of starva- tion and disease in their campaign of genocide against European Jewry. According to papers pre- sented at the symposium, a number of Jewish doctors, :many of whom might have escaped the Nazi death 5 lbs. of MATZO If I can't Beat Your Best Deal / Margolis Household Furniture ARNOLD MARGOLIS D Es ! PI CE T OR E w R I IS R Extends Heartiest and Best Wishes For A HAPPY & HEALTHY NEW YEAR 1Zialzri rizue n:v5 Arnold and Sally Margolis and Family 13703 W. McNichols 342-5351 Hrs. Mon thru Sat. 9:30 til 5:30 A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR machine, chose to remain with semi-starvation dur- outside the ghetto, at the with the trapped Warsaw ing pregnancy, in children, risk of death. Practical work Jews, to give the starving, and in adults, were directed began in February 1942. disease-wracked Jews such at members of the medical Monthly sessions were held medical help as they could. profession. to discuss the observations They also took advantage of Laub stressed the self- of the doctors, Dr. Gumpert an unparalleled opportu- sacrifice and dedication of reported. Two age groups — nity to observe the the ghetto doctors during one of six-12 years and one pathological effects of star-. the Holocaust, declaring of 20 to 40 years — were de- vation. that, despite inhuman odds cided on, to exclude from the The symposium last May, and nightmarish circum- study the biochemical im- also held at the Columbia stances, the doctors re- balances of infancy, adoles- University College of . mained true to themselves, cence and advancing age. Physicians and Surgeons, to their profession and to Each of the doctors knew was sponsored by the Joint the Jewish people. his work could be inter- Distribution Committee, Weinberg described rupted suddenly by death — the Institute of Human the work done by JDC his or his patients, or 133' Nutrition of the College of staff members in the mass catastrophe. But the Physicians and Surgeons, ghetto, asserting that doctors worked feverishly, the New York Academy of many who could have left and in the months left to Medicine and YIVO. Poland refused to do so them, they collected a quan- Many of the main and many were killed as a tity of observations and points of the papers pre- result of that decision. data which would have re- sented at the two-day Dr. Trunk reported that quired years under normal symposium were sum- the use of bacteria was an circumstances. marized in an article by integral part of the Nazi As the situation grew Dr. Martin Gumpert, a genocide campaign. He re- desperate, it became geriatrics specialist, pub- ported that the Nazis clear that the manuscript lished in "The American created conditions in the on the findings had to be Scholar," issued by Phi ghetto which guaranteed removed from the ghetto., Beta Kappa. disease and epidemics Arrangements were Reports were presented at among its residents. By this made to deliver it to the symposium by Maurice means, he said, the Ger- Witold Orlowski, profes- Laub, YIVO chairman; mans achieved two objec- sor of internal medicine '- Marshall M. Weinberg, co- tives: isolating the ghetto at Warsaw University, treasurer of JDC and through strict quarantine according to Dr. Gum- chairman of the JDC East- and the decimation of its pert. Dr. Gumpert re- ern Europe area committee; population. ported that none of the 22 Dr. Isaiah. Trunk, historian Dr. Gumpert's account collaborating doctors and chief archivist at YIVO; traced the start of the ghetto survived. The only one Dr. Alexander Hertz, by the German occupation still alive after the War- sociologist; and Dr. Myron forces on Oct. 16, 1940, saw Ghetto uprising, Dr. Winick, professor of nutri- when all "Aryans" were Emil Apfelbaum, died in tion at Columbia Univer- evacuated and eight-feet January 1946, as a result sity. Sessions and lectures high brick walls, topped of his wartime suffering. on the second day, dealing with broken glass, were Dr. Gumpert, reporting erected to seal off the he saw the study document ghetto. two or three years ago, said There was one closely it was carefully written in watched gate, through longhand in Yiddish. A which bread made from friend translated parts of it wormy flour, mixed with for Dr. Gumpert from time plaster and sawdust, and to time, he said. He added rotten potatoes, were deliv- the papers recently were ered weekly to the totally translated into French and isolated 500,000 men, published by the JDC under women and children. At the the title, "Maladie de end of the first year of such Famine," in Warsaw. ghetto life, all food reserves He said there is no dicus- were exhausted and the sion of politics in the 262 daily ration for each indi- pages "and no note of self vidual fell to about 800 pity." He called "almost in- calories, compared with credulous" the scientific de- 3,000 calories plus daily for tachment of the doctors the average American to- from their own fate and day. from the "infernal back- After'six months of de- ground and surroundings." portations, the ghetto who avariciously guards population had plum- what is left to him, that is, meted from 500,000 to his last physical resources." Dr. Gumpert reported 40,000, Dr. Gumpert re- ported, and the Jews that the scientific studies by secretly mobilized. Gum- the ghetto doctors, which pert then described the proceeded through the first incredible 42-day battle period, starvation, were in- when a handful of terrupted by the second badly-armed, underfed period — extermination. and unaided Jews stood Their laboratories were off the superbly-trained smashed, their hospitals, and massively-equipped such as they were, were burned and the subjects Of-. German forces. Dr. Gumpert reported their study — Jews — were that Dr. Israel Milejkowski, "destroyed wholesale." But the work went on and health commissioner of the district, organized a com- up to the end, there was a mittee which set up special' little group of doctors meet- wards for adults and chil- ing in a basement near the dren and rebuilt as best ghetto cemetery, "discuss- they could the laboratories ing, writing, editing, cor- destroyed by the 1939 Ger- relating their facts and man invasion. Under his their conclusions, until they supervision, a group of themselves died of the ghetto doctors organized a symptoms they so accu- cooperative research project raLely described, or were led to study the effects of star- away to slaughter or vation on the human body, perished in the fighting," leaving to the world "an their own included. abiding testament to Essential instruments human self-respect and had to be smuggled in from dignity."