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Combating Prejudice and Protectionism in American Medicine: The Physicians Committee’s Fight for Refugees from Nazism, 1939–1945
- Holocaust and Genocide Studies
- Oxford University Press
- Volume 28, Number 2, Fall 2014
- pp. 181-239
- Article
- Additional Information
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No lobby reacted with more hostility to Jewish refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe than did the medical profession, yet refugee physicians ultimately fared better than any other occupational group. The counter-campaign waged by a group of American doctors partly resolves this paradox. The National Committee for the Resettlement of Foreign Physicians helped immigrants pass licensing exams in the rapidly shrinking number of states that allowed them to take the tests, and to procure exemptions in the growing number of states that did not. It thus helped physicians to become the only refugees collectively to retain their professional status in their new country.