“It’s What Saved Me”: Jewish Nursing Identity During the National Socialist Regime

Abstract Although nursing had not been a popular choice as a profession for Jewish women in Germany during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its importance as a mode of occupation increased significantly under the Nazi regime. While other professional people were forced to relinquish their status and training, qualified nurses were entitled to wear nursing pins and uniform and Jewish hospitals were allowed to continue to train nurses. Nursing as work therefore offered a number of material advantages. Its identity as a respected and respectable profession for women gave its members a sense of worth and purpose during a time of great horror. The work itself offered a chance for Jewish women to maintain a sense of their humanity and provided them some security in a regime that wanted all Jews dead. Using the written and oral testimonies from a range of Jewish women who worked as nurses under the Nazi regime, this article considers the importance of being a nurse and nursing work as methods of survival. It acknowledges the requirements to subvert the expectation of compassion and self-sacrifice that were necessary for those who were members of a privileged minority in the ghettos and camps.