Book Review

Pediatricians: Victims of persecution 1933–1945

N Engl J Med 2000; 343:1276October 26, 2000

Article

Pediatricians: Victims of persecution 1933–1945
By Eduard Seidler. 494 pp. Bonn, Germany, Bouvier Verlag, 2000. DM 58. ISBN: 3-416-02919-4

Seidler's extraordinary “memory book,” written both in German and in English, tells the story of Jewish pediatricians in the German Reich during the Nazi period, and includes biographical data on more than 750 Jewish German pediatricians of that era. Their names are listed in the “biographical documentation” section (printed only in German), along with relevant personal and professional data. These pediatricians, the author tells us, “were outlawed, they fled or were murdered.” Between 1933 and 1942, approximately 4000 physicians emigrated from Germany to the United States; of these, 70 percent were Jewish (174 were pediatricians). The biography does not restrict itself to describing the leading role of Jewish German pediatricians in academics. It also emphasizes the important part played by these pediatricians in the daily practice of caring for the young in Germany.

In his introduction, Seidler concentrates on the extraordinary fact that almost half the pediatricians in the German Reich of the 1930s were Jewish (611 of 1253). Thirty-two percent of these Jewish pediatricians were women. The numbers are really extraordinary, because at the time less than 1 percent of the general German-speaking population was Jewish. Among all physicians, about 16 percent were Jewish, in itself a large number. The percentages of Jewish pediatricians in 1933 were even higher in large cities: 82 percent in Berlin (215 of 263), 60 percent in Hamburg (27 of 45), and 65 percent in Frankfurt (36 of 55). I doubt that there were such high percentages during this period (or at any other time) in other parts of Europe.

Seidler cites many socioeconomic factors to explain these numbers, including anti-Semitism among academics and members of medical societies and the opportunity to join new medical specialties, such as pediatrics. He raises the possibility that Jews were especially interested in the social aspects of medicine that form an integral part of traditional pediatrics.

The introduction ends with a description of how Germany's health care system managed when, after October 1, 1938, it became Judenfrei — free of Jews — and how the authorities envisioned the future of pediatrics within the framework of a healthy superior race with no genetic defects. A commendable addendum relates the state of affairs in the German Society of Pediatrics after 1945, in particular the tendency to deny or to forget what happened to former Jewish colleagues.

Seidler's outstanding chronicle of Jewish pediatricians in Nazi Germany manages to combine the documentation of a painful chapter in European medical history with a unique effort toward rehabilitation.

As a Holocaust survivor and a retired pediatrician, I find this book exceptional. It should appeal to the older generation of physicians worldwide, who will find in it the names of colleagues and friends, and serve to remind the younger generation how old medical societies can degenerate morally, but ultimately come to their senses and change their ways. This is a universal and timeless lesson and warning.

Alfred Drukker, M.D., Ph.D.
91084 Jerusalem, Israel