2023/01/01 by Lindsey Harris · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #European history and politics #Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society
paper · doi:10.5325/nursinghistory.31.0199
openalex publication_date 2023/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/12/20
“It almost seemed as if Heaven had opened to us. . . . I could actually feel my character being molded,” recalled Estere Szabad on the nursing education she obtained from the School of Nursing at Starozakonnych Hospital in Warsaw during the interwar years (1919–1939).1 Szabad, a Hungarian Jew, became a registered nurse in Poland in 1927.2 Her attendance at the School of Nursing at Starozakonnych Hospital (SNSH) coincided with the nursing profession’s expansion into international public health after the Great War (World War I)3 and highlighted how the nursing profession and its leaders in the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS) in Warsaw actively discriminated against and barred Jewish women’s admittance into national nursing school programs throughout Poland.4Humanitarian aid societies like the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) actively combatted these instances of ethnic and religious discrimination against central and eastern European Jews. The JDC established and funded nursing schools specifically for young Jewish women in affiliation with the Jewish hospitals in Warsaw, Poland, and Berlin, Germany. Many of the Jewish graduates from these schools were retained by the Jewish hospitals in Warsaw and Berlin, with a lucky few obtaining postgraduate scholarships to study in the United Kingdom, France, and America.5 The few nurses who obtained postgraduate degrees often took on leadership positions in Jewish hospital nursing schools after completing their studies.6 They were also warmly welcomed as members of the International Council of Nurses (ICN).7Prominent historical studies such as Barbara L. Brush’s and Joan E. Lynaugh’s Nurses of All Nations have discussed how the ICN pursued a global campaign for the standardization of public health nursing during the interwar period.8 However, a paucity of studies exists on the issue of why and how central and eastern European Jewish women nurses in Poland during this time forged transnational professional networks with other nursing professionals in the United States. This article demonstrates how antisemitism in central Europe increased collaboration between central and eastern European Jewish nurses and their American counterparts during the interwar period.The following questions guided this study of nursing in interwar Warsaw: (1) What were the lasting effects of imperial partition on the nursing and medical professions in Poland during this period? (2) How did imperial partition incorporate multilingualism into the lives of central European Jewry, specifically those in the nursing and medical professions? (3) Why did U.S. nurses seek transnational professional networks with central and eastern European Jewish nurses? (4) What was the intersection between liberal internationalism, nursing, medicine, and central and eastern European Jewry at this time? And (5) how did this intersection create a national identity for central European Jewish women practicing the nursing profession in Warsaw?U.S. nurses working abroad after World War I were strongly influenced by the Wilsonian ideals that were characteristic of the period. Yet U.S. nurses often found themselves in complex political circumstances in central Europe. They often had little understanding of the region’s history and its lasting effects on central European Jewish women who pursued the nursing profession in interwar Poland. Another major issue the U.S. nurses in Poland could not grasp was the multilingual setting in which Jewish nursing students, nurses, physicians, and lecturers worked. Rather than speaking Polish, individuals commonly and freely spoke other languages, including Russian, French, and German in university and hospital settings. This multilingualism resulted from Poland’s long history of being partitioned between the imperial Russian and Prussian empires. The three Partitions of Poland had effectively erased Poland from central Europe in 1795, dividing the state among the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians. Poland’s independence as a nation was not re-established until after the dissolution of the Great War in 1918, and its nationhood was firmly cemented following the Polish-Soviet War in 1921.Poland’s legacy of cultural suppression also had deep connections with Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, which demanded the Germanization of Poles.9 Bismarck’s culture struggle targeted village schools in Prussia, Poznania, and Silesia, and demanded that the Poles be fluent in the German language rather than in Polish.10 In his work The Kulturkampf in Prussian Poland, Lech Trzeciakowski discusses how Bismarck’s goal was to weaken the Polish identity as a nation.11 Trzeciakowski argues that the Kulturkampf was ultimately not successful and rather awakened a greater sense of national pride among Poles residing in Prussian Poland.12 However, he also shows how the Kulturkampf impacted Polish society overall and created a mixed nationalism among Poles. These two major events in Poland’s history display how Warsaw became a multilingual scientific center in the interwar period.As borders shifted in post-imperial Europe, Warsaw remained a scientific center of Jewish professional life in medicine. Now an independent state, Poland was at the center of a new, post-imperial Europe, and Warsaw was one of the nation’s medical hubs. Partitioned no longer, the second Polish Republic (1918–1939) was composed of substantial territory from the fallen Austrian, Prussian, and Russian empires. The legacy of imperial partition combined with a postwar migratory wave created a multilingual landscape within the newly established nursing profession in Warsaw.One example of this multilingual landscape was the Joint Distribution Committee’s (JDC) establishment of the nursing school at Starozakonnych Hospital. Funded by the JDC,13 the SNSH opened its doors in 1923 and provided a first-class nursing education to young Jewish women in Warsaw who were not allowed to study with the Polish Red Cross.14 Despite the antisemitism that plagued Poland, young Jewish nursing students received the ample benefit of a world-class nursing education at the Starozakonnych Hospital for two reasons. First, the Starozakonnych Hospital was an ideal setting for Jewish nursing and medical communities in Poland. It housed eight medical pavilions, 1,100 beds, and remained the only hospital in Warsaw that was allowed to treat Jewish patients.15 Second, the SNSH provided its students with the standard curriculum designed by the U.S. National League of Nursing Education. That education differed from what had been previously taught by Red Cross Societies. As historian Jaime Lapeyre discusses in Histories of Nursing Practices, “The training of ‘nurses’ by many national Red Cross Societies throughout the war had been controversial, as many of these programmes provided women primarily with training in first aid rather than full courses in nursing practice.”16 The SNSH provided Jewish nursing students with a rare opportunity to become expert public health nurses.Starozakonnych Hospital was not without its difficulties. The hospital experienced a severe nurses’ shortage following the Great War and the Polish-Soviet War.17 In 1921, the hospital’s medical staff and the JDC set out to increase the hospital’s nursing staff.18 As a result, the JDC selected U.S. nurse Amelia Greenwald to lead the project and serve as director of the nursing school.19As a result of Poland’s complex history, the collaboration between Amelia Greenwald and the Starozakonnych Hospital staff to establish a world-renowned nursing program in Warsaw was wrought between two complicated ideologies. The effects of imperial partition clashed with the liberal internationalism seeking to solidify a national Polish identity in the interwar years. Unaware of how the mixed nationality among the Polish people would impede those efforts, U.S. nurses engaged in establishing nursing schools in Poland.Amelia Greenwald hoped the Starozakonnych Hospital would soon welcome other young Jewish women seeking a nurses’ degree and hoped it would receive her plans to establish a scientifically based school of nursing. Upon surveying the physical spaces the Starozakonnych Hospital provided for the nurses’ school, Greenwald was shocked by the inadequate facilities.20 Frustrated by the Starozakonnych Hospital committee’s perception that one classroom, two offices, a twelve-bedroom dormitory, and two bathrooms (without laundry facilities) were sufficient for a fully operational nursing school, Greenwald sought reinforcements.21While serving as a nurse with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during the Great War, Greenwald had forged a strong professional network with other U.S. nurses. Among these were Katherine Olmstead, chief of the nursing division, League of the Red Cross, and Major Julia Stimson, director of nursing for the AEF.22 Many of these same U.S. nurses continued their work abroad after the war.23 Trusting the old adage that “seeing is believing,” Greenwald contacted her colleague Helen L. Bridge, a Red Cross nurse who had established two schools of nursing in Europe24—one in the Russian Island Hospital in Vladivostok, Siberia, and the other in Warsaw.25 Bridge, serving as director of the Red Cross-affiliated school of nursing at the Smolna Hospital in Warsaw, extended an invitation to the Starozakonnych Hospital committee to visit.26 Greenwald was enthusiastic to show the Starozakonnych Hospital committee what a first-class nursing school required in terms of space and equipment.Shortly following the visit, Greenwald reflected upon the committee’s surprise and excitement “that not a part of one but two entire buildings had been given over for the nurses’ use.”27 One building contained the student dormitory while the other housed the nurses’ school with a lecture hall, a model ward, a hospital kitchen, and a laboratory for chemistry and bacteriology courses.28 The committee was convinced that adequate facilities had not been provided for its future pupils at Starozakonnych Hospital.A major goal for U.S. nurses like Greenwald was to convince male-dominated medical communities of the importance of educating nurses using the best information possible. Greenwald felt this was achievable only through the implementation of the standard curriculum composed by the U.S. National League of Nursing Education (NLNE). Her aim was for her future students of the SNSH to receive the same education that she had received at Johns Hopkins, where she completed her postgraduate education in psychiatric nursing at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic.29Greenwald, like many other U.S. nurses employed overseas in the interwar period, deployed liberal international policies through her public health work and her desire to establish nursing schools based on the Nightingale system of nurse education. First introduced in Europe in 1919 by the LRCS, the Nightingale system had as its goal the development of national programs in public health nursing in central, southeastern, and eastern Europe during the postwar reconstruction years.30 The program rapidly developed, and other institutions like the JDC became interested in disseminating this education system for nurses.31Many of the U.S. nurses who led dissemination projects abroad shared professional connections through the ICN. Some of those connections were made in solidarity during service in the Great War, while others were maintained through international conferences like the European Nurses’ Conference.32Despite various connections, Greenwald faced many challenges in establishing the SNSH. Chief among her challenges was her lack of ability to speak Polish. She had no Polish language skills, which obviously impaired her ability to serve as the school’s director and lecturer. Greenwald’s success, much like the success of other U.S. nurses, doctors, and civil servants in central, southeastern, and eastern Europe in the interwar years, was owed to translators and stenographers. According to Greenwald, Ms. Schönberg served as her translator and held a Magistra Legum.33 The international scientific collaboration forged between the JDC, Greenwald, and the Starozakonnych Hospital was facilitated through Schönberg’s expertise as a translator. Her role was crucial to the establishment of the SNSH, its renovations, and the translation of Greenwald’s lectures and curriculum into Polish. Greenwald’s task and the eventual acclaim the nursing school received would not have been accomplished without this skilled translator.Unfortunately, for the Jewish nursing students at Starozakonnych Hospital, no nursing textbooks were written in their native languages. The young women were required to read textbooks written in English and approved by the U.S. NLNE rather than books written in Russian, German, and French.34 Greenwald presented her lectures in English, and Schönberg then translated them into Polish.35 Concerning the lack of nursing textbooks in the students’ native languages Greenwald declared, “We haven’t one in the languages they read—and I don’t know how I ever had the nerve to require them to master the same curriculum used at John Hopkins—but they’ve done it! By taking excellent notes during their lectures, and later digging into whatever medical book they could find in Russian, German and French, as there are very few medical books printed in Polish.”36Left to their own devices, the nursing students found medical texts available in Russian, German, and French to prepare for their final examinations,37 which were given in Polish.38 The young pupils were fortunate that another JDC instructor, Ms. Hoffmann, was fluent in Russian. Greenwald also sought out a lecturer fluent in German for the students’ benefit.Physicians employed by the Starozakonnych Hospital, who also served as lecturers at its nursing school, were fluent in Russian, German, French, Polish, and English. These same physicians at Starozakonnych Hospital also published numerous medical texts in Russian, German, French, Polish, and English. As obtaining an apprenticeship in medicine across national boundaries was a standard practice in imperial Europe, young medical students or doctors were required to possess multilingual skills, thus creating a robust learning environment in medicine.39Greenwald’s lack of language skills caused her to document the dynamic multilingualism by which the medical and nursing communities of Warsaw studied and communicated. Russian, French, and German were the preferred languages of nursing students, nurses, lecturers, and doctors alike at the Starozakonnych Hospital.40 The fact that so little Polish was spoken was a problem, however. Greenwald was so shocked by what little Polish was spoken by the nursing students that she added a Polish language course to the curriculum.41 She wrote, “Tomorrow we shall begin classes in Polish for the students, as unfortunately most of the girls speak better Russian than Polish, which of course is not desirable. It is resented by the native Poles, and besides the examinations will be in Polish, and they should speak that language from now on, if they are to work in this country, as they expect to do.”42In reality, the nursing students disliked speaking in Polish; they preferred speaking and learning in Russian and reading medical texts in Russian, French, and German.43 Greenwald was frustrated by their multilingualism as much as she admired it. She also feared that the Polish government would reprimand the SNSH for allowing students to attend lectures given in Russian or German. As she disclosed:Ironically, Greenwald advocated for the nursing students’ assimilation to the Polish language (a language she resolved not to learn) as much as she decried intrusion by the Polish government into lectures. Greenwald also concealed from the Polish government that the courses were primarily given in Russian and German. She documented her thoughts on the matter, writing, “it is like waving a red flag in the face of a bull to let them hear lectures or classes given in Russian or German, therefore when any of the Government officials visit us, as they occasionally do, we have to find an excuse to discontinue class!”45These multilingual interactions between physicians, nurses, nursing students, and lecturers existed in a transnational space. This transnational space displayed the international scientific collaboration between central Europeans which spread in imperial Europe and continued into the interwar period. It is also important to consider how the nursing profession lent itself to a transnational framework. Historian Karen Flynn elaborates on this topic in her work featured in Within and Without the Nation, where she argues that membership in the ICN contributed to greater transnational links among nurses.46 The SNSH sent delegates to the ICN annually. These conferences heightened the transnational professional space the Jewish nurses occupied in Warsaw.For a brief moment in history, the legacy of imperial partition within the territory that comprised independent Poland met the cosmopolitanism exhibited by Jewish professionals in the nursing and medical fields in Warsaw. This transnational focus presented a major disconnect from the Polish government’s nationalizing sentiments. Therefore, the liberal internationalism exhibited by those U.S. nurses working alongside central European Jewish nurses both dispelled and a complicated professional and This among nursing and medical professionals in central and eastern Europe a desire for greater scientific collaboration across national boundaries in an political was Greenwald’s language of Jewish medical and nursing it if the following are into In Warsaw a of as a result of the Partitions of Poland. this same I established the of Warsaw, with course in the medicine, and However, following the of the of Warsaw faced reprimand from and was the of the of Warsaw was as a medical school only in in the other were with the that the university was to out and in languages such as English, German, Polish, and were the university did not from in these languages if it was their native The university also that multilingual were in thus creating a multilingual environment in Warsaw in which students and lecturers engaged in transnational professional the of model of created during the imperial was over into at the SNSH. this would the effects imperial partition had on Poland, its and its discusses how should not that people in Europe displayed of a a Europe composed of was a created by the of in argues that and how and why people themselves and from the the most in this article there a benefit for the Jewish medical and nursing communities in interwar Warsaw to in Russian, French, and German over I that the benefit was First, it their scientific and apprenticeship with throughout the imperial Europe. Second, on an the multilingual landscape in which the Jewish medical and nursing communities in Warsaw a desire for international scientific collaboration with U.S. nurses and doctors against an and nursing profession this multilingual its standardization in Europe coincided with in the This political resulted in a national language in education. However, this practice was to in Poland. nurses, and nursing students alike continued to in Russian, French, and German, as the nursing students Polish The multilingual setting Greenwald at Starozakonnych Hospital did not her from seeking who were fluent in Polish. Her for in Warsaw was to the shortage of nurses in Poland. She soon set her on Berlin, with the of a German fluent in Polish. She wrote, “It would to have a German speaking German nurse who speak Polish would be instances show that Amelia Greenwald was than an American she was an American nurse influenced by liberal ideals who engaged in in Poland during its interwar reconstruction years. Greenwald, as a influenced and facilitated the standardization and of the Jewish nursing in Poland. The historical legacy of the Nightingale system of nurse and the standard curriculum that required nursing students to be fluent in the national language of the in which they would practice central in this the language shifted how the Jewish nursing in Warsaw it did not the multilingual landscape within the nursing profession in Europe. The of Jewish nurses in Warsaw became and multilingual as a result of the national language upon Nightingale system of nurse education by Greenwald in Warsaw the nurses’ Polish and English English language allowed two nurses from the SNSH to education in nurse in the United The Nightingale system of nurse education effectively the complex identity of central European Jewish nurses as they exhibited a Greenwald Warsaw in in the that the SNSH was an international In the school received in the upon Greenwald’s to the the school, and his was featured in or German also the school, “The and of this school in the best schools which I had the opportunity of in . . . The Nurses School is of the for the public as there are any nurses in Poland. . . . the establishment of this one for the training of nurses is a for the and the school is a of culture for legacy was also documented by in her Starozakonnych The two nurses maintained a the Starozakonnych Hospital, its nurses, and its in Greenwald Szabad and training in the United through the transnational nursing networks she forged with other American nurses like School of Szabad and training in the United was a women to Warsaw, and her as director of the SNSH in a brief of international scientific collaboration in the interwar years. The legacy of imperial partition met liberal policies in the nursing and medical professions in Warsaw during that period. The Nightingale system of nurse education was also a of liberal The U.S. nurses like Amelia Greenwald engaged in abroad not only a of nurses in Europe but also effectively young Jewish women into a national Polish its focus on the JDC to grasp how the legacy of imperial partition facilitated a robust scientific environment among nurses and physicians not only in central and eastern Europe but also in for her and as my I also and for their and I its and for their of my during the I School of and its