Zwischen Arbeitslosigkeit und Berufsverbot: Die deutschsprachige Ärzte-Emigration nach Palästina 1933–1945

When the National-Socialists started their restrictive measures against Jewish civil servants and professionals in 1933, they caused a wave of emigration only to be surpassed by the one following the Anschluß of Austria and the ‘November pogrom’ in 1938. Due to their great number, jewish doctors were to become the main object of Nazi persecution in the professional group. Up until 1935 Palestine was their main destination of immigration. In 1935 the British Mandatory Government passed a numerus clausus which mainly cut down the licensing of newly arrived doctors. The article deals with the social problems caused by the mass immigration of a highly qualified professional group in Palestine and with the fight against the restrictive measures of the mandatory Government. A short retrospective glance is cast at the situation in Palestine before 1933. Finally an outlook is given at the impact of this immigration on the health system in Israel.     

Medizinische Expertise – zionistische Visionen: Ärztinnen und Ärzte als Immigranten in Palästina / Israel

In National Socialist Germany Jewish academicians and professional staff were initially deprived of their rights and marginalised, later they were chased down and murdered. With regard to those, who were able to escape the National Socialist realm of power, one can speak of a forced migration of academicians that reached a dimension which until now was unknown. A greater number of different academic as well as non‐academic occupational groups have been examined in the past few years in connection with their influence on scientific as well as social developments within the context of immigration. In this context Palestine, later Israel, occupies a special position. There exists a deficiency in research for the occupational group of physicians with regard to overindividual studies, which will be the focus of this analysis. There is no question about their part not only in the establishment of medical care structures in Palestine as well as the design and diversification of the Israeli health care system, but also in the international significance of Israeli developments in medicine and life sciences in the second half of the twentieth century. This study will examine members of a Zionist grouping that had exhibited Zionist engagement already before their flight from Europe. The objective of this examination is to determine the substantial contribution of Zionist physicians in designing the medical structures in the country.