White Coats in the Ghetto: Jewish Medicine in Poland during the Holocaust

The book traces within a broad historical context the actions of the approximately 800 brave Jewish physicians, nurses, and other practitioners who strived to maintain the health of the Jewish population while risking their lives fighting two wars—against the Nazis and the death sentence that they imposed on the ghetto residents; and against the spread of epidemics. At the same time that the medical personnel contended with daunting professional and ethical challenges, they miraculously managed to conduct unique research on  the diseases that they treated, and also to establish an underground medical school to train a new generation of Jewish physicians at great personal risk. In this pioneering study, Miriam Offer examines the unparalleled phenomenon of the establishment of the Jewish medical system in the Warsaw ghetto and in other ghettos  during the Holocaust, and proposes historical explanations for its unique characteristics, shedding light on an important yet relatively unexplored subject that will be of great interest to both the medical community and the general public alike.