Jewish Women Medical Practitioners Who Rescued Fellow Jews During the Holocaust

Rescue of Jews by Jews has only lately begun to emerge as a topic of independent research. Yet Jews in every country in occupied Europe, themselves victims of the German occupation, used various daring means to help Jews survive the Holocaust. Among the Jewish rescuers who operated as individuals, and not as part of an underground rescue operation, the number of medical personnel stands out, and quite a few of them were female physicians, nurses and also women with no professional medical background, who pursued this work under extremely difficult conditions, despite the dearth of resources, the constant threat of exposure to infectious diseases and the lack of any protection. Some of them initiated perilous rescue operations that would have meant certain death had they been discovered. This article is dedicated to the Jewish women rescuers who were part of the medical system in Nazi-occupied Europe.