Bylam tylko lekarzem... (I Was Only a Doctor...)

  • Zofia
  • Szymańska (Rozenblum)
  • Warszawa
  • 1979
  • personal accounts
  • yes
  • no
  • Polish

  • She finished medical studies in Paris in 1915. She worked in Moscow in a neurological clinic. Having returned to Poland, she opened the first Paedological (paediatric) Clinic in Poland. She founded infectious hospitals in Vilnius County. After the war, she was the head of the Health Clinic for Children and Youth in Chelmska Street (later: the Main Mental Health Clinic). Before the war she lived at Pulawska Street No. 3. In the ghetto - Leszno Street No. 44 (uncertain). She was in the ghetto from October 1940 to August 1942. After the outbreak of war, together with Adolf Berman and Jozef Gitler, she organised the board of the Centos (Central Organization for Orphan Care). She was chief physician of the Centos, all the children's institutions were sanitarily subordinate to her. She witnessed shooting doctor Steinkalk in the street. After the dissolution of the Centos (during the First Action) she had to left the ghetto as an unemployed. She crossed to the 'Aryan side' together with her niece, Jasia (an acquaintance, a Pole - Ms Leszezanka, a worker of the Municipal Board, registered Szymanska as a worker of Department of Social Welfare of the Municipal Board; thanks to it S. could leave the ghetto). She worked at Pulawska Street No. 97, in an institution for morally neglected boys. She hid at Irena Solska's place, later in the the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in Kazimierzowska Street (17 days) and in a convent in Ozarow. Dr Szymanska's mother died in the ghetto of natural causes. Only the fragment concerning the memoirs from the ghetto was indexed.