She refused to leave them.
- Feb 28
- 1 min read
"To fight the unbeatable foe…"
The Jews of Warsaw and surrounding areas were forced into a ghetto created in the fall of 1940. At its height, more than 400,000 Jewish people lived in the ghetto and were allotted 180 calories per person per day. (This while Germans in Warsaw were allotted 2,600 daily.) As a result, starvation was a leading cause of death before deportations ever began.
There are countless individual stories of life in the Ghetto, and today we meet Anna Braude-Heller, a pediatrician from Warsaw. Anna had devoted her life to children before the war and continued to do so even against impossible odds. She served as the Chairwoman of the Jewish Health Committee, participated in the Hunger Study, and of course, was at the bedside of the littlest victims of German atrocity.
We know of Anna’s life through the testimony of her colleague, Adina Blady-Szwajger, who survived the Holocaust and later wrote this of her friend:
"The hospital was her home. Sick and dying children were her children. She died with each child who could not be saved, and she constantly reorganized the demolished hospital. Dr. Chief did not leave the ghetto. In the last letter we received from her, she wrote: 'Don't worry about me – I have other plans'."
Anna Braude-Heller was killed on April 19, 1943, during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. How many of us, I wonder, would be as resolute, as devoted, as brave?
