Camp Medicine. On Jewish Workers’ Illnesses, Suffering and Death in the Forced Labor Camps in Poznań (1941–1943)
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 8 (2012), pages: 121-144
Publication date: 2012-12-02
Abstract
In German-occupied Poznań during 1941–1943 there was the total of 29 forced labor camps for Jews. Those deported there were mostly women and men from the Łódź ghetto and the so-called provincial ghettos of Reichsgau Wartheland. They were assigned to hard earthwork in Poznań and its vicinity. Various regulations of the German administration of Reichsgau Wartenland regulated the living conditions of the prisoners, the way they were fed, accommodated, clothed and treated. The condition of the Jews detained in the camps was especially dramatic. They suffered from various infectious diseases, digestive tract diseases and had numerous ulcerations and wounds. Typhus fever, which spread especially fast, plagued most prisoners. Within the framework of the efforts to counteract its possible further spread, a few Jewish physicians were brought from Berlin to treat the prisoners. German companies’ owners also tried to bring physicians to the camps but they did that only to protect their interests. The physicians had limited possibility to help the sick due to the acute lack of medications and necessary medical instruments, ban on hospital treatment of Jews and impossibility to maintain standards of hygiene and cleanliness in the camps. The Jewish hospital set up in the city did not comply with any medical/sanitary standards, and many of its patients spent the last moments of their lives there. Out of nine identified Jewish physicians sent to Poznań only three managed to survive until the end of World War II.
Keywords
forced labor camps for Jews, Poland [Wielkopolska], Reichsgau Wartheland, Jewish physicians, diseases, ghettos
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