Deciphering the mysteries of the neural code.

This essay is dedicated to the memory of my father David Sompolinsky. As a medical student in Veterinary Medicine in Copenhagen, with the support of his professors and the Danish Resistance, David organised the rescue of 700 Danish Jews in October 1943, helping them escape Nazi persecution and find safety in Sweden.

[THE UNIMAGINABLE CONNECTION BETWEEN JEWISH DOCTORS AND THE GERMAN MEDICAL TRAINING SYSTEM DURING THE NAZI REGIME].

INTRODUCTION: In his important article, Prof. G. Eshel describes the story of three Jewish physicians who returned to Nazi Germany to complete their MD thesis despite laws prohibiting Jewish students from German Universities. The three physicians completed their MD thesis examination with the help of three German Professors who supported them regardless of the laws banning Jewish students. The three physicians risked their lives by returning to Nazi Germany, as did the three professors who supported them. The three physicians returned to Palestine upon completion of the requirement for their medical licensing and continued to contribute to the medical system for many years in the State of Israel. The determination of the three Jewish physicians and their courage teaches us an important lesson on the motivation of young doctors to complete their education and practice medicine. The support of the German professors created some lights in the great darkness of the Nazi regime. Generations of physicians took a stand on non-medical issues and contributed to social justice and the wellbeing of individuals beyond medical care. We should all continue this legacy.

Fragments of Alchemy from a Cairene Synagogue: Context, Codicology, and Contents of the Alchemical Corpus of the Cairo Genizah.

This article presents the results of a survey and a first assessment of the corpus of alchemical manuscripts retrieved from the Cairo Genizah, a storage room mainly intended for sacred writings that is attached to the Ben Ezra synagogue of Old Cairo. The alchemical manuscripts are described in their codicological and palaeographic features; their content is analysed in the context of the medieval production of alchemical texts in the surrounding Islamic world. The alchemical corpus of the Genizah represents a unique and widely unstudied source for our understanding of the relationship between Jews and alchemy in the medieval Mediterranean World.

Marginalised within a minority: Jews with disabilities in the Jewish press of the Kingdom of Poland (1860s-1914).

This article is the first scholarly research focusing exclusively on the history of Jews with disabilities in the Kingdom of Poland from the 1860s to 1914. It analyses sources drawn from the Jewish press in Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew. Areas of investigation include the hierarchy of attitudes towards different categories of individuals with disabilities, spiritual perspectives on disability, and the portrayal of disabilities within Jewish literature. The study places particular emphasis on the Jewish deaf community, given the proliferation of available source material. Drawing on the broad conceptual framework of disability studies, the authors examine the phenomenon of medicalisation, tracing its influence on Jewish public discourse over the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth.

Eponyms that honor Jewish dermatologists: A celebration and a remembrance, Part three: Jewish physicians who practiced during the Holocaust and in its aftermath.

Part III of this contribution continues to celebrate the many contributions that Jewish physicians have made to advance the specialty of dermatology, as reflected by eponyms that honor their names. Part I covered the years before 1933, a highly productive period of creativity by Jewish dermatologists, especially in Germany and Austria. The lives of 17 Jewish physicians and their eponyms were described in Part I. Part II focused on the years of 1933 to 1945, when the Nazis rose to power in Europe, and how their anti-Semitic genocidal policies affected leading Jewish dermatologists caught within the Third Reich. Fourteen Jewish physicians and their eponyms are discussed in Part II. Part III continues the remembrance of the Holocaust era by looking at the careers and eponyms of an additional 13 Jewish physicians who contributed to dermatology during the period of 1933 to 1945. Two of these 13 physicians, pathologist Ludwig Pick (1868-1944) and neurologist Arthur Simons (1877-1942), perished in the Holocaust. They are remembered by the following eponyms of interest to dermatologists: Lubarsch-Pick syndrome, Niemann-Pick disease, and Barraquer-Simons syndrome. Four of the 13 Jewish physicians escaped the Nazis: Felix Pinkus (1868-1947), Herman Pinkus (1905-1985), Arnault Tzanck (1886-1954), and Erich Urbach (1893-1946). Eponyms that honor their names include nitidus Pinkus, fibroepithelioma of Pinkus, Tzanck test, Urbach-Wiethe disease, Urbach-Koningstein technique, Oppenheim-Urbach disease, and extracellular cholesterinosis of Karl-Urbach. The other seven Jewish physicians lived outside the reach of the Nazis, in either Canada, the United States, or Israel. Their eponyms are discussed in this contribution. Part III also discusses eponyms that honor seven contemporary Jewish dermatologists who practiced dermatology after 1945 and who continue the nearly 200 years of Jewish contribution to the development of the specialty. They are A. Bernard Ackerman (1936-2008), Irwin M. Braverman, Sarah Brenner, Israel Chanarin, Maurice L. Dorfman, Dan Lipsker, and Ronni Wolf. Their eponyms are Ackerman syndrome, Braverman sign, Brenner sign, Chanarin-Dorfman syndrome, Lipsker criteria of the Schnitzler syndrome, and Wolf's isotopic response.

["AN UNFINISHED SYMPHONY": MEDICINE DURING THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING].

INTRODUCTION: This year marks the anniversary of the 80th year of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943 -2023), a very important and significant turning point in the history of the Holocaust. The Uprising is not the only demonstration of courage and strength, in rebelling against the brutal Nazi oppressor: there was another form of intellectual and spiritual resistance in the ghetto - medical resistance. Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals resisted. Not only did they provide very diverse and dedicated medical assistance to the ghetto residents, but they went beyond their professional duties in initiating research on Hunger Diseases and in founding a clandestine medical school. The medical work in the Warsaw Ghetto is a symbol of the victory of the human spirit.

Izrael Milejkowski and Hunger Disease Study in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Izrael Milejkowski (1887-1943), dermatologist and venerologist, and his research team conducted research starvation in the ghetto. The patients were taken to hospital wards, where they were monitored and subjected to various medical procedures. In meetings of the research team, the physicians reported their observations. This research led to a series of medical contributions that included descriptions of changes in diseases of hunger-starvation, anatomy, biochemistry, skin, cardiovascular, ocular, and blood morphology. We describe this unique study in the Warsaw Ghetto, which took place during World War II.

Ophthalmology research in the Warsaw Jewish ghetto-hunger disease and the story of Szymon Fajgenblat, MD.

PURPOSE: During World War II, scientific studies were conducted in the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw (Poland). This research, focusing on hunger-induced disease, was embedded in circumstances of omnipresent hunger and starvation. Ophthalmologist Szymon Fajgenblat (1900-1944) was one of the involved physicians and wrote a manuscript about ophthalmological changes during starvation. The background and the findings of his research are discussed in this article. METHODS: Literature and archival research. RESULTS: The Warsaw ghetto existed from 1941 to 1943 until it was destroyed, just like most of its inhabitants. Before destruction took place, the Nazis tried to kill the residents-almost half a million Jews-by means of starvation. Led by dermatologist Israel Milejkowski, a group of Jewish physicians decided to study the physical effects of hunger on human beings. Twenty-eight physicians would participate in the Hunger Disease Studies, including Fajgenblat. He linked cataracts to serious undernourishment and observed scleral thinning as another sign in hunger disease; the latter likely responsible for the low intraocular pressure found in the study population. Surprisingly, no complaints of night blindness or ophthalmological findings, characteristic of vitamin A deficiency, were observed in the study population. CONCLUSION: The Hunger Disease Studies are a unique written medical and historical monument of the Jewish physicians of the Warsaw ghetto. Ophthalmologist Szymon Fajgenblat was one of them and left behind an ophthalmological study as his legacy.

The Accountants of Nineveh: Exile Jews and Capitalism in British Imperial Thinking.

This essay presents and discusses how James Rennel (1742-1830), a royal cartographer in eighteenth-century Bengal and father of British Modern Geography, presented and discussed the biblical concept of "exile" as a "practice" for the benefit of the empire. Following Rennell's readings in Biblical and Classical texts, this essay shows how Rennell intervened in contemporary European debates about Jews and trade.

[Israel and covid-19: how will the history of the epidemic in this country be written in the future?] / Israel y covid-19: ¿cómo se escribirá en el futuro la historia de la epidemia en este país?

This article attempts to hypothetically reflect on how historians of science will write their research on the development of the covid-19 pandemic in Israel in the future, within a context that includes: the political crisis experienced by the country at that time; the history of the public health institutions established from the time of the first Jewish settlers in Palestine, at the beginning of the twentieth century, and slightly modified by a law of 1994; the conceptual schemes developed during the last decades by historians of public health and pandemics in general.

El presente artículo representa un intento de reflexionar hipotéticamente sobre la manera en que los historiadores de la ciencia escribirán en el futuro sus investigaciones sobre el desarrollo de la pandemia de la covid-19 en Israel, dentro de un contexto que incluye: la crisis política que vivió el país en esos momentos; la historia de las instituciones de salud pública establecidas desde la época de los primeros colonos judíos en Palestina, a principios del siglo XX, y modificadas ligeramente por una ley de 1994; los esquemas conceptuales desarrollados durante las últimas décadas por historiadores de la salud pública y las pandemias en general.

Genomes from a medieval mass burial show Ashkenazi-associated hereditary diseases pre-date the 12th century.

We report genome sequence data from six individuals excavated from the base of a medieval well at a site in Norwich, UK. A revised radiocarbon analysis of the assemblage is consistent with these individuals being part of a historically attested episode of antisemitic violence on 6 February 1190 CE. We find that four of these individuals were closely related and all six have strong genetic affinities with modern Ashkenazi Jews. We identify four alleles associated with genetic disease in Ashkenazi Jewish populations and infer variation in pigmentation traits, including the presence of red hair. Simulations indicate that Ashkenazi-associated genetic disease alleles were already at appreciable frequencies, centuries earlier than previously hypothesized. These findings provide new insights into a significant historical crime, into Ashkenazi population history, and into the origins of genetic diseases associated with modern Jewish populations.

Hunger Disease in Southern France Internment Camps during World War II: The Pioneering Studies of Dr. Joseph Weill.

BACKGROUND: Dr. Joseph Weill was a French Jewish doctor who made significant contributions to the knowledge of hunger disease in the refugee camps in southern France during World War II. He was involved with the clandestine network of escape routes for Jewish children from Nazi-occupied France to Switzerland. Take home messages • During the Holocaust, in the ghettoes and death camps, a few research projects, mainly on hunger and infectious diseases, were performed by Jewish physicians and scientists • Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners were incarcerated within the notorious system of internment camps in southern France • Dr. Joseph Weill (1902-1988), a French Jewish physician and a distinguished member of the Résistance managed to enter the internment camps and medically assist the inmates in addition to performing systematic research and follow-up of those who presented with hunger disease.

Starvation Genocide: Diabetes and Cancer in the Lodz Ghetto.

BACKGROUND: Extermination via starvation was described in detail as an alternative or precursor to the final solution during the Holocaust in World War II. The main causes of death in the ghettos were exhaustion, environmental conditions (inadequate protection in extreme climates), infectious diseases, or starvation. In previous studies on the Lodz Ghetto, the causes of death via typhus exantematicus, tuberculosis, and heart failure were investigated [1,2]. In this article, we introduce the topic of diabetes in the presence of starvation and assess the incidence of malignancies in the years 1941-1944. The findings from the Lodz Ghetto would retroactively support the Warburg theory.

From unskilled worker to full professor: The eventful life and career of the Jewish pathologist Herman Medak (1914-1991).

The Jewish pathologist Herman Medak (1914-1991) went down in medical history as a pioneer in the early detection of oral carcinomas. As a longtime full professor of oral pathology at the University of Illinois, he influenced several generations of students and young researchers. His many experimental studies attracted special attention, as did his "Atlas of Oral Cytology" (1970). Largely unknown, however, is the fact that the Viennese-born scientist had to flee from the Nazi regime immediately before his medical state examination and thus arrived in the United States without a qualifying professional degree. This article attempts to fill the existing research gaps and to reconstruct Medak's life and work. It sheds light on Medak's years of study in Vienna, his forced emigration from Austria, his restart in the U.S. and his path to becoming a full professor of oral pathology. It also addresses the question of why Medak remained in Chicago until the end of his life and how the University of Vienna later dealt with its expelled students. The analysis is based on a large number of documents from archives in Austria and the U.S., but also on transcripts and other material from the private collection of the Medak family. These documents were supplemented and compared with the relevant secondary literature. It can be shown that Medak had to overcome considerable setbacks not only in Vienna, but also in the U.S., before he got on the road to professional success. Five factors ultimately proved to be career-enhancing: the Nimbus of the "Vienna School", Medak's unconditional striving for education, his deliberate specialization in oral pathology, his early international contacts and his willingness to adapt and acculturate. Like most other displaced scholars, Medak was widely ignored in postwar Austria. Today, the University of Vienna maintains an online memorial book that also provides information about Medak - albeit still rudimentary.

Per aspera ad astra: Life and work of the persecuted Jewish oral pathologist Joseph Weinmann (1896-1960).

Given his seminal scientific oeuvre, Joseph P. Weinmann (1896-1960) is considered a pioneer of oral pathology. He also paved the way for generations of scientists and physicians with the standard work "Bone and Bones", his textbook on oral pathology and histology, and the "Oral Pathology Program" at the University of Illinois. Far less well known is the fact that Weinmann, as a Jew, was disenfranchised by the Nazis in Vienna in 1938. Against this background, this study aims to shed light on the circumstances of Weinmann's persecution and subsequent forced emigration, as well as the further development of his career in the United States. This includes the question of which factors were decisive for Weinmann's scientific breakthrough in Chicago. The analysis draws on a variety of archival sources and contemporary printed writings. What at first glance looks like the impressive curriculum vitae of a successful scientist turns out to be a story of loss, violence, and a difficult new beginning. Joseph Weinmann first had to overcome several setbacks - disenfranchisement and expropriation by the National Socialists, a brief imprisonment before his planned escape from Vienna, and a failed immigration attempt in Great Britain - before he succeeded in an international career in the USA, which brought him, among other things, a chair and the presidency of the "American Academy of Oral Pathology". From the results, it can be concluded that Weinmann's success was not due to one specific reason, but based on many mutually beneficial factors (personal relationships, scientific prominence, favorable research environment, fortitude, adaptability, highly sought-after professional specialization).

Genetic and phylogeographic evidence for Jewish Holocaust victims at the Sobibór death camp.

Six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. Archaeological excavations in the area of the death camp in Sobibór, Poland, revealed ten sets of human skeletal remains presumptively assigned to Polish victims of the totalitarian regimes. However, their genetic analyses indicate that the remains are of Ashkenazi Jews murdered as part of the mass extermination of European Jews by the Nazi regime and not of otherwise hypothesised non-Jewish partisan combatants. In accordance with traditional Jewish rite, the remains were reburied in the presence of a Rabbi at the place of their discovery.

"We Do Not Want Him Because He Is a Jew": The Montreal Interns' Strike of 1934.

Speeches by modern-day White supremacists often include such statements as "Jews will not replace us." In 1934, the French-speaking medical interns of Montreal's Roman Catholic hospitals went on strike because, they alleged, a Jew "replaced" a Roman Catholic French Canadian. Anti-Semitic social and economic boycotts and educational quotas were in existence in Canada from the 19th through the mid-20th century. There were particularly strong anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic feelings in the first half of the 20th century in Quebec, along with anti-Semitic pro-fascist political parties. In 1934, Montreal's Hôpital Notre-Dame (HND), a teaching hospital of the Université de Montréal (UM) medical school, was unable to hire a full complement of medical interns from among the newly graduated French-speaking Roman Catholic medical students. The hospital hired a French-speaking Jewish graduate of UM, Samuel Rabinovitch. The prospective interns at HND submitted a petition demanding that Rabinovitch be fired, stating, "We do not want him because he is a Jew." On 14 and 15 June 1934, HND's interns went on strike to prevent Rabinovitch from taking up his duties. The strike spread to multiple hospitals in Montreal. A Jewish urology trainee at the Hôtel Dieu hospital, Abram Stilman, was also targeted. Rabinovitch resigned in order to bring the strike to an end. The strike buttressed the case in the first half of the 20th century for American and Canadian Jewish hospitals and medical schools to ensure the education of Jewish physicians, reminds us of the origins of the slogans of modern White supremacists, and reinforces the historical basis of efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in medical education.

From emigration to remigration: The Jewish pathologist Fritz Meyer (1875-1953) and his extraordinary life course.

Fritz Meyer (1875-1953) is undoubtedly one of the most enigmatic pathologists and internists of his time: He emerged early as a major researcher in the field of infectious diseases. Later, he also focused on heart and lung diseases and became a celebrity doctor who treated ambassadors and prominent contemporaries of the United States. The course of his life was as unusual as his professional activities: At the beginning of the Third Reich, Meyer experienced far-reaching repression due to his Jewish ancestry, which led to forced emigration to the USA. Although he achieved professional success in his new homeland, he returned to Germany in 1948 - as one of very few Jewish emigrants from the Third Reich. This article takes these peculiarities as an opportunity to take a closer look at Fritz Meyer: It recapitulates the biography and scientific merits of the Jewish pathologist and pays special attention to the background of his emigration to the USA and his later remigration to Germany. The central basis of the study are contemporary newspaper articles and various archival sources evaluated for the first time. These sources are compared with the sparse secondary literature on Meyer and other persecuted pathologists. The results of the study can be summarized in five points: (1) Meyer's research on infectious diseases - especially diphtheria, tuberculosis and serum therapy - was considered leading-edge at the time. (2) Meyer suffered widespread repression after 1933, which led him to emigrate to the United States in 1935. (3) Thanks to influential contacts, he was able to continue his professional career in the U.S. almost seamlessly. (4) In the postwar period, he decided to return to Germany, mainly out of attachment to Europe. (5) His reintegration in Germany seemed to be successful - however, he died only a few years after his remigration. The analysis leads to the conclusion that Meyer's social reintegration in postwar Germany was significantly facilitated by his professional reputation and his largely apolitical demeanor in public; nevertheless, it can be shown that he secretly lamented the lack of consciousness of guilt of the German postwar population. Several indications cast doubt on his intention to remain permanently in Germany. This includes the fact that he held on to his U.S. citizenship until the end of his life and that his wife remained in the United States.

Research on Tuberculosis in Nazi Germany and the Cruelest Medical Experiments on Jewish Children: An Observational Review.

BACKGROUND: Germany was a scientifically advanced country in the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in medicine, with a major interest in research and the treatment of tuberculosis. From 1933 until 1945, Nazi Germany perverted scientific research through criminal experimentations on captured prisoners of war and on "subhumans" by scientifically untrained, but politically driven, staff. This article exposes a series of failed experiments on tuberculosis in adults, experiments without scientific validity. Nonetheless, Dr. Kurt Heißmeyer repeated the experiment on Jewish children, who were murdered for the sake of personal academic ambition. It is now 75 years since liberation and the murdered children must be remembered. This observational review raises questions of medical and ethical values.