John Goldsmith: refugee from Nazi Germany who became a pioneer of kidney dialysis

Abstract

John Goldsmith overcame a tumultuous childhood and adolescence, first as a refugee from Nazi Germany and later as an interned “enemy alien,” to become an early pioneer in kidney dialysis, setting up the UK’s second home dialysis service. He was born Hans Goldschmidt in 1924 in Oberkassel near Düsseldorf, Germany, to Jewish parents. His mother, Malli, was a dentist, and his father, Hermann, a grain importer. His parents divorced and he moved with his mother to Düsseldorf in 1928. Malli married a Jewish dentist and Hans enjoyed a happy childhood until 1933 when his stepfather, Alfred, was kidnapped and murdered by a rival dentist and Nazi party member. Hans and his mother fled to his uncle in Amsterdam, where Hans went to school and learnt Dutch, while Malli was forced to find work in Brussels. Here she met a woman from the Cambridge Refugee Committee who found dental work for her in Cambridge and secured Goldsmith, who spoke no English at that point, a place at the Methodist Leys School at a reduced fee. After they arrived in England in 1938 Malli worked hard to help friends and family get out of Germany, although many were unable to escape and were killed in the Holocaust. On his 16th birthday in 1940 Goldsmith (now known as John) was at school writing an English essay when …