A Polish doctor in the Nazi camps : my mother's memories of imprisonment, immigration, and a life remade / Barbara Rylko-Bauer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rylko-Bauer, Barbara.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rylko, Jadzia, 1910-2010.

Rylko, Jadzia.

Physicians--Poland--Biography.

Physicians.

Poland.

World War, 1939-1945--Medical care--Poland.

World War, 1939-1945.

Neusalz (Concentration camp).

World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Polish.

Poland--Biography.

Medical Subjects:

Physicians.

Poland.

Genre:

Biographies.

Personal narratives -- Polish.

Personal narratives.

Physical Description:

xv, 400 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, [2014]

Summary:

Jadwiga Lenartowicz Rylko, known as Jadzia (Yah'-jah), was a young Polish Catholic physician in Łódź at the start of World War II. Suspected of resistance activities, she was arrested in January 1944. For the next fifteen months, she endured three Nazi concentration camps and a forty-two-day death march, spending part of this time working as a prisoner-doctor to Jewish slave laborers. A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps follows Jadzia from her childhood and medical training, through her wartime experiences, to her struggles to create a new life in the postwar world. Jadzia's daughter, anthropologist Barbara Rylko-Bauer, constructs an intimate ethnography that weaves a personal family narrative against a twentieth-century historical backdrop. As Rylko-Bauer travels back in time with her mother, we learn of the particular hardships that female concentration camp prisoners faced. The struggle continued after the war as Jadzia attempted to rebuild her life, first as a refugee doctor in Germany and later as an immigrant to the United States. Like many postwar immigrants, Jadzia had high hopes of making new connections and continuing her career. Unable to surmount personal, economic, and social obstacles to medical licensure, however, she had to settle for work as a nurse's aide. As a contribution to accounts of wartime experiences, Jadzia's story stands out for its sensitivity to the complexities of the Polish memory of war. Built upon both historical research and conversations between mother and daughter, the story combines Jadzia's voice and Rylko-Bauer's own journey of rediscovering her family's past. The result is a powerful narrative about struggle, survival, displacement, and memory, augmenting our understanding of a horrific period in human history and the struggle of Polish immigrants in its aftermath.

Contents:

Telling My Mother's Story

A Young Doctor in Occupied Lodz

Becoming a Doctor

Anna Maria Hospital

Doctoring in Litzmannstadt

The Shadow of the Ghetto

Resistance and Rescue

Women's Prison on Gdanska Street

In the Camps

"Treated Like an Animal"

Zugang in Ravensbruck

The Camps of Gross-Rosen

Neusalz Slave Labor Camp

Slave Doctor

Death March

Flossenburg and the End of War

Surviving Survival

Displaced Person

Refugee Doctor

Reclaiming the Past

"Beginning a New Book"

Shattered Dreams

Returns and Departures

One Hundred Years

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780806144313

0806144319

OCLC:

849510018