Medicine in the Holocaust and Beyond
The Second International Scholars Workshop 7-11.5.17
The Galilee Declaration
The participants in the Galilee Second International Workshop on Medicine after the Holocaust pledge the following
Conference Committees
International Organizing Committee
Chairs:
Chairs: Prof. Shmuel Reis (Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Medicine in the Galilee, Safed, Israel)
Dr. Miriam Offer (Holocaust Studies Program, Western Galilee College, Akko, Israel)
Prof. Nachman Ash (IMA; The Department of Health Administration, Ariel University, Israel; Director, Division of Health, Maccabi Health Services); Dr. Masad Barhoum (General Director – Galilee Medical Center); Dr. Boaz Cohen (Head, Holocaust Studies Program, Western Galilee College, Akko, Israel); Dr. Esther Cuerda (Rey Juan Carlos University, Alcorn, Madrid, Spain); Dr. Tessa Chelouche (Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Israel); Dr. Esteban González López (School of Medicine, Autonoma University of Madrid, Spain); Prof. Dan Michman (Head, The International Institute for Holocaust Research & Incumbent of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem, Israel);Prof. Nadav Davidovitch (Director, The Department of Health Systems Management, Ben Gurion University, Israel); Raya Kalisman (Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Israel); Dr. Etienne Lepicard (Ashkelon College and “Korot,” Israel); Dr. Iael Nidam (Director of the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, Israel); Prof. Dina Porat (Chief Historian of Yad Vashem; Head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry & Incumbent of the Alfred P. Slaner Chair for the Study of Racism and Anti-Semitism, Tel Aviv University, Israel); Prof. Shaul M. Shasha (Galilee Medical Center, Israel); Prof. Jacob Sosna (IMA;Director, Department of Radiology & Medical Imaging, Hadassah Medical Center, Israel)
International Scientific Committee:
Chairs:
Prof. Dan Michman (Head, The International Institute for Holocaust Research & Incumbent of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem, Israel)
Prof. Paul Weindling (Oxford Brookes University, Wellcome Trust Research Professor in History, Oxford, UK)
Dr. Tessa Chelouche (Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Israel); Dr. Boaz Cohen (Head, Holocaust Studies Program, Western Galilee College, Akko, Israel); Dr. Kenneth Collins (Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Glasgow & Visiting Professor in the History of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel); Dr. Herwig Czech (Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance & Department of Contemporary History, Vienna University, Austria); Prof. Nadav Davidovitch (Director, The Department of Health Systems Management, Ben Gurion University, Israel); Prof. Sabine Hildebrandt (Boston Children’s Hospital, Division of General Pediatrics/Dept. of Medicine; Harvard Medical School, Ass. Prf. Pediatrics; Lecturer on Global Health, Boston, USA); Prof. Michael A. Grodin, MD (Professor and Director, Project on Ethics and the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, Professor of Jewish Studies, Bioethics, Human Rights, and Psychiatry, Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health, Boston MA, USA); Dr. Dan Kaznelson (MD, DMD, PhD, Caesarea, Israel); Prof. Samuel Kottek (Professor [Emeritus] of the History of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel ); Dr. Etienne Lepicard (Ashkelon College and “Korot,” Israel); Dr. Anat Livne (Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Lohamei Hagetaot, Israel); Dr. Danny Nadav (Tel Aviv University, Israel); Dr. Iael Nidam (Director of the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, Israel); Dr. Miriam Offer (Holocaust Studies Program, Western Galilee College, Akko, Israel); Prof. Avi Ohry MD – (Director, Division of Rehabilitation Medicine, Reuth Medical Center, Tel Aviv & Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel); Prof. Dina Porat (Chief Historian of Yad Vashem; Head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry & Incumbent of the Alfred P. Slaner Chair for the Study of Racism and Anti-Semitism, Tel Aviv University, Israel); Prof. Shmuel Reis (Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Medicine in the Galilee, Safed, Israel); Prof. Bill Seidelman [Emeritus] (Dept. of Family and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. Resident of Beer-Sheva, Israel); Prof. Shaul M. Shasha (Galilee Medical Center, Israel)
International Advisory Committee
Chairs:
Prof. Susan Benedict (Assistant Dean and Department Chair, Acute and Continuing Care, PARTNERS Professor and Director of Global Health, Co-director Campus-wide Program in Interprofessional Ethics, School of Nursing, UTHealth, Houston, Texas, USA)
Prof. Avi Ohry MD (Director, Division of Rehabilitation Medicine, Reuth Medical Center, Tel Aviv &Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel)
Prof. Raul Artal (Chairman and Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health at Saint Louis University, USA); Prof. Theresa Duello (University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA); Prof. Gabor Gazdag) Szent Istvan and Szent Laszlo Hospital, Head of the Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine Center, Budapest, Hungary); Prof. Michael A. Grodin, MD (Professor and Director, Project on Ethics and the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, Professor of Jewish Studies, Bioethics, Human Rights, and Psychiatry, Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health, Boston MA, USA); Dr. Nils Hansson (Department for Medical History, University of Cologne, Germany); Dr. Matthis Krischel (RWTH Achen University, Institute of the History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine, Achen, Germany); Dr. Sheldon Rubenfeld (President of the Center for Medicine after the Holocaust (CMATH), Clinical Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Clinical Professor of Nursing at the University of Texas School of Nursing, Houston, USA); Dr. Jaime Herz Romanowsky (Dentist – Prosthodontist, Mexico); Prof. Linda Shilds (Professor of Tropical Health Nursing, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia); Dr. William Silvers (Allergy Asthma, Colorado, USA); Dr. Michal Simunek (Institute fur Zeitgescichte /Abt. Wissenschafts-geschichte der AdW, Prag, Czech Republic ); Dr. Raphael Toledano MD ( Centre Européen du Résistant Déporté, Natzweiler-Struthof Museum, Strasbourg, France); Prof. Hedy S. Wald (Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Sharon, USA)
Conference Rationale
The history of medicine during the Holocaust marks an all-time low in the noble profession and raises basic questions about the processes leading up to the Holocaust and to the central role played by physicians and scientists during the Third Reich.
The conference organizers believe that the medical activity during the Nazi period poses a multidisciplinary challenge, which may contribute to a deeper understanding of core aspects of the Nazi Holocaust period as well as of its postwar implications right up to the present day. This applies to the medical and science professions as well as to
additional levels of social and political dynamics in the 21st century.
The conference will include lectures presenting new findings and emphases and will re-examine grave issues that have previously been discussed. The program will include discussions of the role played by scientists and medical persons in strengthening the National Socialist ideology and how they contributed to the acceleration of the Final Solution. New research will be presented on the role of German nurses in service of the Nazi ideology. Other sessions will revisit issues related to crimes led by psychiatrists, dentists, roentgenologists, gynecologists, researchers of anatomy, and other professionals. New research will be discussed on the criminal medical experiments and exploitation of victims’ bodies for scientific research, not only during the Holocaust but also decades later!
In addition to deepening the discourse on the moral deterioration process of the medical systems and the physicians in Nazi Germany, we will discuss new studies on the activities of Jewish physicians in the various regions under Nazi occupation, as well as the uniqueness of the reaction of the Jewish physicians during the Holocaust: How, as persecuted victims, the Jews, independently, set up impressive, moral, professional medical systems under genocide conditions.
The aim of the conference is to present new, up-to-date research on all aspects of Medicine in the Holocaust and Beyond, to discuss the research agenda in the field, and to spur international collaboration to advance research, teaching, and the public discourse.
During the conference, a proposal will be made to include this important history of medicine period in the compulsory curriculum of medical faculties worldwide. Teaching programs and learning material will be presented. The conference organizers are convinced that learning about both the darker and brighter sides pertaining to the role of physicians and their organizations in medicine during the Holocaust can serve as a major tool for shaping the professional identity of present and future health care professionals.
The conference participants believe that the study of the history of medicine in the Holocaust and beyond poses an essential warning to novices in science and medicine and to patients, who are confronted with a world of technological and medical achievements that have the power to either improve or destroy humanity.
Presenters hail from 17 different countries and we thank them in advance for their special effort to travel to Israel to contribute to this event.
The conference lectures will address the following aspects of the research field of Medicine in the Holocaust and Beyond:
1. Methodology and Historiographyin the Study of Medicine and the Holocaust
2. Medical and Scientific Activity during the Interwar, Third Reich, and Holocaust Periods
– Trends in worldwide science and medicine during the interwar period and the implications for medicine during the Nazi regime
– The scientific community, the health system and their workers before and during the Holocaust: institutions, scientific and medical organizations
– The sterilization and euthanasia campaigns , the criminal medical and scientific experiments
– German medical policy in the Nazi-occupied areas
– Medical activity in ghettos and camps
– Biographical studies of physicians in the Holocaust: perpetrators and victims.
– Ethical dilemmas facing medical staff in ghettos and camps
– Involvement of local non-Jewish medical personnel and institutions in medical persecution or rescue activities.
3. Medicine after the Holocaust
– Morbidity in the displaced survivors’ camps
– Health and unique morbidity among survivors, treatment systems and methods tailored to survivors, second and third generations
– The Nuremberg Doctors Trial
– Exploitation of victims’ body parts during and after the Holocaust and concealment of information
– Coping with and disregard of the medical crimes among health and science institutions after the war and up to the present day
– Resilience and post-trauma, testimonies, perpetrators asking forgiveness
– Health systems in extreme conditions and conditions of genocide
4. Bioethics after the Holocaust
– Ethical codes after the Holocaust and to the present day
– Modern bioethics and the role of Holocaust insights in decision making
– Sociological and psychological aspects of medical crimes and altruistic medicine
5. Education about Medicine and the Holocaust
– Curricula in medical faculties and Holocaust and genocide research institutes on Medicine in the Holocaust and Beyond
– Text books and auxiliary materials, conferences and projects in the field, exhibitions, literature, research and academic journals
– Trips to sites in Germany, Poland, Austria, and the Czech Republic focused on medicine and the Holocaust
The many conference partners include: Western Galilee Academic College, Bar-Ilan University, Galilee Medical Center Nahariya, Yad Vashem, The Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, the Bar-Ilan Faculty of Medicine – Safed, Israel Medical Association, the Azrieli Foundation, and the Russell Berrie Foundation. We express our heartfelt thanks to all our partners, without whom we would be unable to hold this important event. We extend a special thank you to the Azrieli Foundation, whose especially generous donation has helped to enhance the scope and quality of the conference.
Conference Venue
The Second International Scholars Workshop “Medicine in the Holocaust and Beyond” will be held at various venues , however, accommodation will be offered in two hotels in Akko. Complimentary transportation will be offered to and from the conference hotels to all the proceedings and events. The venues are:
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Western Galilee College, Akko– 2 days, 8-9.5.2017
08.30 – 18:00 [8.5.2017]
18.30- Gala Dinner, The Crusaders Halls, Akko [8.5.2017]
08.00 – 18.00 [9.5.2017]
18.30 – Social program , Western Galilee College, Akko [9.5.2017]
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Galilee Medical Center, Nahariya– 1 day symposium, 10.5.2017
08:30 -16:00: “The 17th Nahariya Conference on Medicine and the Holocaust,” initiated and led by its founder, Prof. Shaul Shasha. (simultaneous translation)
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Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum – P.M. – 10.5.2015
16:00-18:00 Visit to the Deadly Medicine Exhibition–
Transportation and guided tour of the museum immediately following the Nahariya Conference
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Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Medicine in the Galilee , Safed – 1 day – 11.5 2017
09:00-16:00- Day symposium on Education for Medicine After the Holocaust
Conference Partners
Conference events
A. Sunday, (7.5.2017) 19:00-21:00: Welcome reception, Rimonim Palm Beach Hotel, Akko
refreshments for the body and soul: two documentary films and a reading
I. Debut screening in Israel of the new documentary film “NANA,”followed by Q&A session with Serena Dykman, its French-Belgian award-winning filmmaker, who is based in New York. A departure from other Holocaust-related cinema, the film is made from a third-generation perspective, about Dykman’s late grandmother, Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant. Maryla was a survivor of Auschwitz, where she was forced to act as translator for Dr. Mengele for several months, and after the war, became a life-long tolerance activist.
II. Screening of 28-minute film “ Ala z Elementarza” (The Girl from a Reading Primer). In Polish with English subtitles, the film director Edyta Wroblewska presents the testimony of Dr. Alina Margolis, together with her husband,Dr. Marek Edelman.As nursing and medical practitioners, respectively, in the Warsaw Ghetto, their experience is both illustrative and symbolic of what it meant to be a medical professional during the Holocaust and Beyond. Born in 1922, Adina was a hospital nurse in the Warsaw Ghetto. Later, she fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and was one of the few who survived. After the War, Dr. Margolis qualified in medicine and specialized in pediatrics. After the fall of communism, she returned to Warsaw, where she created the “Nobody’s Children Foundation” devoted to helping abused and abandoned children. Dr. Margolis died in 2008.
III. Reading: Physician Lisa Gruenberg will read us her essay, “A Beautiful Day,” published last year in “Ploughshares,” a Boston-based literary journal. The essay examines the story of her father’s Aunt Pepi, who, in 1942, was hospitalized at Am Steinhof, the psychiatric institution on the outskirts of Vienna, where she died some weeks later. Dr. Gruenberg’s admission note was written by Victor Frankl, the author of “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
B. Monday [8.5.2017]
– 17:10-18:30 Tour of the Crusaders Halls in Akko and dinner for all participants. [Transportation will be provided from Western Galilee College to the Crusaders Halls, and from there to the dinner venue.]
– 19:30 Gala Dinner for all conference participants – at Rimonim Palm Beach
– Hotel.
Evening program:
Opening Remarks: Eival Giladi , Chairman of Western Galilee College, Dr. Sheldon Rubenfeld , President of the Center for Medicine after the Holocaust (CMATH), Houston, USA
Presentation of Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Emeritus Shaul M. Shasha for pioneering the Nahariya conferences on Medicine and the Holocaust. Presented by Masad Barhoum & Miriam Offer
After Dinner Speaker: Major General (Res.) Doron Almog – Israel Prize Laureate for Lifetime Achievement for founding ALEH Negev – a unique rehabilitative village for children and young adults with severe disabilities. Introduced by : Boaz Cohen
Music: Yair Dalal & George Samaan-V-AHAVTA ” and you love…” Songs and poetry of love and peace in Hebrew and Arabic. Introduced by: Shmuel Reis
Transportation to the event and back to the hotel
C. Tuesday [9.5.2017]- Western Galilee Academic College
– 19:00: Cultural Program and Dinner for all conference participants- Western Galilee Academic College
Presentations of theater, film & opera productions relating to conference themes
Moderators: Shmuel Reis & Hedy Wald
Presenters:
Joshua Sobol is a playwright, author and director (“Ghetto,” “In the Cellar”):“Outwitting Typhus and Nazi Doctors”
Ella Milch-Sheriff, composer, has composed operas based on her family story and composed the music for a recently released feature film, inspired by her family story, by the renowned Israeli director Avi Nesher (Past Life). Her compositions are performed in Israel and all over the world. She is second-generation to Holocaust survivors. Her father was a medical doctor
Transportation bac to the hotel after the event
D. Wednesday – Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum
16:00 – 18:00 Opening Remarks: Raya Kalisman, Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum
The Story of the Place, Tour of the Deadly Medicine Exhibition; Visit to “Yad LeYeled” – the only museum in the world devoted entirely to the fate of children during the Holocaust
18:00-19:00 – 1947: After Nuremberg: Music in the dawn of a new world.
A Music-Story of the Post-War World. A program combining classical, folk and traditional music with story-telling, reflecting the post-Nuremberg ethic and culture. Ayela and Bari Seidelman-Moscovitz, Etienne Lepicard with Bet Hagats’ Ritmo Anuma Ensemble
19:00-20:00 – Evening Meal (Dairy) for conference participants at the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum
Explore the area
Contact
Dr. Miriam Offer
Dr. Miriam Offer is a senior lecturer at Western Galilee Academic College and an expert researcher on Jewish medical activity during the Holocaust. Her book, White Coats Inside the Ghetto: Jewish Medicine in Poland During the Holocaust, was published in Hebrew in April 2015 by Yad Vashem, and the English edition is currently in process. While researching the history of medicine and physicians in the Shavli Ghetto in Lithuania, Miriam exposed previously undiscovered valuable diaries and archival documents. She is currently conducting a series of studies on Jewish medical activity immediately prior to, during, and after the Holocaust.
Miriam is a partner in research and educational initiatives on the history of medicine during the Holocaust. Inter alia, she is a member of the organizational scientific committee of the Nahariya Conferences on Medicine and the Holocaust, initiated by Prof. Shaul Shasha, and is a scientific committee member and guide for “Witnesses in White”—organized trips to Poland for physicians—under the auspices of the Israel Medical Association.
Miriam was one of the founders of the Hedva Eibschitz Institute for Holocaust Studies in Haifa, where she served as Director from 1988 to 1993.
Contact
Shmuel P. Reis, MD, MHPE is a family physician over 38 years in northern Israel. He is Professor & academic director of the Center for medical Education in the Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University/Hadassah, Jerusalem, Israel and an emeritus Professor in the Bar Ilan University Faculty of Medicine in the Galilee (Safed,Israel) . He is also adjunct Professor at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University ( Providence, RI. USA). Dr. Reis teaches and mentors at all levels, from students to practitioners in CME and consults at Alpert Medical School of Brown .He has written and lectured widely on his topics of interest including assessment of students and physicians, Holocaust and Medicine, and patient-doctor communication.
