“Show that you are really alive”

Abstract

The archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee place Sara-Zofia Syrkin-Binsztejnowa (1891–1943), a prominent physician and activist in the Warsaw Ghetto, on the frontlines in the battle against typhus and the launch of the Jewish public healthcare system in the nascency of Poland’s Second Republic. The evolution of her pioneering efforts is traced against a backdrop of epidemics, post-war nation-building and the emergence of an international public health episteme. The recovery of these neglected early years of Syrkin-Binsztejnowa’s medical career sheds new light on her social activism in the Warsaw Ghetto long marginalized in Holocaust historiography. The author contrasts Syrkin-Binsztejnowa’s interwar work to her efforts coordinating public health programs and the fight against epidemics under Nazi occupation, which were largely undermined by policies of racial persecution and mass murder.