The only Jewish hospital in Germany will continue to exist for the time being, thanks to the city government’s temporary assumption of the annual $100,000 deficit incurred by the Berlin Jewish Hospital.
The hospital, with its 400 beds and its staff of 250, can look back upon a great healing tradition. It was the solitary Jewish institution in Germany able to continue operations, albeit amid constant harassment and on a severely restricted scale, throughout the Nazi regime.
In recent years the Berlin Jewish Community has modernized the hospital plant at considerable expense and, under the medical direction of Dr. Oscar Rosenberg, has carried on the work of nursing the sick as a Jewish responsibility, even though only a small fraction of the patients are now Jews. The heavy deficit, however, drained the resources of the shrunken community to the point where it had to announce, after long negotiations, that it could no longer carry the burden after January. At this juncture the West Berlin municipal administration stepped in, bridging the financial gap until the beginning of the next fiscal year.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.