Sanctuary and Victim: A Medical School that Challenged the Jewish Quota and Welcomed Refugees from Nazism

Abstract At the time it closed in 1947, Middlesex University School of Medicine (MUSOM) in Waltham, Massachusetts was one of the few American medical schools that did not restrict the enrollment of Jews, who reportedly comprised 85 percent of its students. This school also welcomed students and faculty forced to flee Nazi-occupied Europe, and at least twenty-one faculty and eleven student refugees were offered sanctuary there during the Nazi period. Though Middlesex was an oasis from antisemitism, prevalent anti-Jewish attitudes and practices of its time may have caused its demise. After its forced closure, the school’s property was donated to the founders of a new Jewish-led university.