Anna Braude-Heller, Seen from a Distance

Abstract:Dr. Anna Braude-Heller, a pediatrician, worked for many years as director of the Bersohn and Bauman Hospital for Jewish children in Warsaw. She supervised this institution up to its last moments, remaining with her young charges until the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in spring 1943. This article attempts to present both her private life and her career as a consistent path of conscious decisions. It is based on different historical sources, from medical documentation (including her prewar medical articles), through interwar press detailing her activism and involvement in many philanthropic actions, and memoirs from and of the wartime period. One of the most important references is her article, written in the Warsaw Ghetto, concerning the effects of long-standing hunger among children in the hospital she directed.