Psychoanalysis
Cultural Perspectives
Lodz and the Shoah
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Article: Lessons
from a WWII ghetto resonate with doctors today. The Boston Globe
features a story on Dr. Bursztajn's teaching activities at Harvard
medical School relative to learning from his parent's experiences
with doctors during the Shoah. This article was inspired by a recent
Surgical Grand Rounds, "Health
Care in the Lodz Ghetto: Care, Compliance, Conscience and Resistance" that
Dr. Bursztajn presented at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center on
July 8, 2009. More recently, the story has been picked up by the Los
Angeles Times.
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The Shoah and its Aftermath: the
testimony of Dr. Bursztajn's father, a Holocaust survivor.
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Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin issue from Autumn 2006 titled "Sparks
of Inspiration" includes the article "Prescriptions
for Hope". Lessons from the Holocaust in how doctors
can heal through hope, an adaptation of Dr. Bursztajn's original
article above.
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For more information on Jewish Lodz, please visit the Lodz
ShtetLinks home page.
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A photograph of Dr. Bursztajn's
mother who was part of the Lodz resistance in 1944.
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Stories and recollections of fragments of Doctor Salomea Kape's life
with the shadow of the holocaust behind it:
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The Unforgotten,
first place in the Literature: short story category in the
2003 American Society of Anesthesiologists 35th Annual Art
Exhibit "Fountain
of Youths." This is a powerful story about the complications
of forgiveness.
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On the Autopsy
Table in Lodz...Biebow from Bremen, a Memoir by Salomea
Kape published in the Summer 1993 issue of Lilith, The Independent
Jewish Women's Magazine, Volume 18, No. 3.
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Hunger, appeared in
JAMA, September 23/30, 1988, Volume 260.
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Fatal Freedom,
a short story.
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From one of Dr. Bursztajn's medical school classmates, another way
to remember the past:
I was on a cruise of the western Mediterranean last month,
followed by a few days in the south of France. I spent them with
a teacher who guided her elementary pupils through a project
to document the life and times of two Jewish girls, aged 3 and
8, who lived in the town of (then) 300 before being taken to
Sobibor. A pupil proposed renaming the school "Lea and Elizabeth
Schnitzler"; this was done. Their work won a French national
award for teaching the Holocaust. When the award was about to
be given at the Sorbonne nearly two years ago, a French Jewish
organization looked to see if there were any surviving relatives
of the girls. Through a convoluted set of Internet connections,
they got in touch with me. Those girls were my third cousins!
When I visited France, I met the girls' former playmates, now
septuagenarians. Here is
a journalist's account of my visit to the school. Later I saw
a displaced persons' camp (Rivesaltes) near Perpignan, a maternity
home for those from the camp, some marvelous churches, and (just
before the teacher and her husband drove me across the Spanish
frontier) the town where the girls were arrested.
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"Psychic
Numbing and Genocide," the lead article in the November
15, 2007 issue of the American Psychological
Association's Psychological Science Agenda.
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Article: Holocaust
Survivors at Higher Risk for All Cancers. Jewish survivors of
World War II who were potentially exposed to the Holocaust are at
a higher risk for cancer occurrence, according to a new study published
online October 26 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Cultural Highlights
Dr. Bursztajn has an active patient care practice and consults to physicians,
institutions, judges, and plaintiff and defense counsel nationally.