Marnie Taylor
This book is published within the series of Nursing History and Humanities by Manchester University Press. The stated aim of this series is to ‘provide a forum within which practitioners and humanists may offer new findings and insights’. With this premise in mind the reviewer was hoping to find a well-balanced and thoughtful exploration of a subject about which they had little previous knowledge.
The book comprises the stories of refugee nurses who had come to Britain because of the anti-Jewish programme of persecution in Germany and Eastern Europe in the 1930s. The author has looked at the topic from a gendered perspective and argues that this cohort of refugee women were provided an opportunity to continue or commence in healthcare that was denied to their male colleagues.
The book looks at the topic in four parts: escape, the nursing world, wartime nursing, and nursing in the post-war world. The author has used a range of personal narratives, both oral and written, as well as letters and articles from the nursing and medical press of the day and archival documents. This book has followed the lives of these refugees from being young girls in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia prior to National Socialism, their escape to Britain and entrance into nursing and their professional experiences during the Second World War and beyond. The book concludes with the legacy that these refugees have contributed to the nursing profession.
Part one looks at why these women became refugees in the first place. Prior to Hitler coming to power in Germany in 1933 many Jews lived a largely middle-class life. Things then changed dramatically for Jewish people, as they found themselves over time restricted in regards to education, university places, and the continuation of their usual professions. With the rise in antisemitism, it became apparent to many that there were limited future opportunities available to them in their homeland. There were three main escape routes available to women and children, namely the Kindertransport and either domestic service or nursing visas. Of the 55,000 Jews who fled to Britain, it was recorded by the Home Office in 1940 that 941 were nurses, midwives or nurse probationers. One in three refugees arrived as ‘domestic servants’ which came as a cultural shock for many of these women who now became servants for the first time (rather than employing staff to clean and work for them as they had done before prior to their escape). This part has many personal reminiscences from refugees talking about their struggle to overcome the horrors of getting to Britain and about how poorly many of them were treated by host families and employers once they were there. The author also discusses the lack of altruism on behalf of the British Government in granting these visas. There was a large gap in the employment market for both domestic servants and nurses and the government and nursing profession had struggled to find suitable local women to plug this void. The refugees were seen as a ready supply of grateful employees. It is stated by the author that German nursing qualifications were not recognised by the General Nursing Council, so this meant that although many of the nurses had considerable experience prior to coming to Britain they were often employed on lower wages during their full training period.
Part two discusses the issues encountered by the refugees when they tried to pursue nursing as a pragmatic work option. The Central Co-Ordinating Committee for Refugees was tasked by the Home Office in 1938 to establish two sub committees, the Domestic Service Bureau and the Nursing and Midwifery Committee. These two committees were entrusted with arranging suitable Jewish women to gain visas to enter Britain to work either as domestic servants or within the nursing profession. The remit of the committee was to coordinate the recruitment of educated Jewish women into the nursing profession. Not all the refugees whose narratives are in the book initially wished to avail themselves of the opportunity to enter nurse training, but as their only other choice was domestic service it appeared to be a better option for many of them. Many of the Jewish female refugees reported struggling once they came to Britain for a variety of reasons. They had left behind all that was familiar to them, and many did not speak English to any great degree. In addition, there were significant cultural and religious differences and they often had great concerns about their families that had stayed behind. Many of the refugee nurses spoke about the ambivalence they encountered from the British general public, and at times the great hostility towards them as ‘enemy aliens’. Although both the government and the profession presented nursing as a useful choice for refugees, many of the refugees reported their difficulties in getting accepted to teaching hospitals despite the obvious need for their services.
Part three describes some of the challenges and hardships that the refugee nurses went through during the war years. After being offered employment though the nursing visa scheme all the nurse refugees were dismissed from their positions in the Spring of 1940 after the fall of France. Following the declaration of war in September 1939 the status of Jewish refugees changed to ‘enemy aliens’ as it was felt by the government that all refugees would be faithful to their homeland and were not to be trusted. This was even though, as Jews, they were despised by the Nazi regime and had fled their homeland. Initially at the outbreak of war, refugee nurses in hospitals were able to carry on working but had restrictions placed upon them such as the imposition of a five-mile radius (whereby the women could not travel more than five miles from their place of residence), prohibition on cycling, and being made to move from areas where they might of been able to pass on information to Germany such as ports, coastal areas and factories. Two of the nurses’ oral histories discuss how they were interned on the Isle of Man: this was despite there being no obvious reason for why they suffered this indignity. The dismissals did not last long and within six months many of the refugee nurses were asked to come back into the profession but not necessarily in the same position or hospitals that they had left, as ongoing restrictions meant they could only work in hospitals that did not admit military personnel. Despite this many did choose to return and wanted to assist in the war effort and by the end of the war several of the refugees had finally qualified and looked forward to a professional future.
The final part looks at the professional lives of some of the refugee nurses after the war. With the return of the men from the front line there was no longer a need for the women to continue in the roles that they had filled to support the war effort. It was expected that most women would return to the home and men would go back to their usual jobs, but as nursing has always been a female dominated profession, there was a continuing need for the refugees to nurse, and many were not demobilised until 1947. This part looks at what some of the nurses did from volunteering to provide rehabilitation for the survivors in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the emotional, mental and physical challenges this had on them, through to training to become both midwives and health visitors. Developments in nurse training and education lead to some of the refugees becoming academic staff in the new departments of nursing where they lead new practice, education and research.
This book has been an interesting and thought provoking read. It is a subject that has not been readily looked at previously within the gamut of holocaust reminiscences and the author quotes an extensive bibliography to support her writings. I would highly recommend this book to any reader with an interest in either nursing or holocaust history.
