4 - The Sick

Summary

The Joint Distribution Committee failed to coordinate effectively among the reactive, incoherent international health campaigns undertaken to prevent the spread of typhus. Reactions to this failure to make public health more sensitive to Jewish needs resulted in the establishment of autonomous Jewish health programs. Jewish social medicine thus flourished, with American Jews, including Hadassah, acting as the bridge from the prewar years. Gradually, Jewish American workers left Europe and turned over work to European Jewish organizations and local Jews. These public health programs allowed Jews to reconstruct and even seek to improve their local status through incremental change, without state sanction. Furthermore, medicine was uncontroversial within Jewish communities and Jewish health professionals were relatively abundant. Unlike battling disease, which required governmental collaboration that was difficult to achieve, social medicine could work as a form of apolitical resistance to oppression.