Estimating that since Hitler’s coming to power in Germany some 5,000 physicians have fled to the United States from persecution in Nazi-held countries, the New York Times, in an editorial yesterday, urged the Federal Government to initiate a plan for having these doctor’s services utilized by rural communities.
“Now that the armed forces are draining the universities, hospitals and private offices of the younger doctors, we need these men,” the editorial points out. It then enumerates the obstacle, which have been put in the way of refugee doctors, and says: “It is estimated that at least fifteen hundred medical emigres have not yet been placed. The States should relax their rules so that they may practice in rural communities. Tests of competence should be reasonable and uniform, with the possession of first papers one of them. Whether internships must be served should be determined in the light of the applicant’s past experience. Largely because of medical hostility in small communities, the foreign physicians have been forced to congregate in large cities (2,000 in New York alone), where many of them simply vegetate and hope against hope for the dawn of a better day. These unfortunates should be distributed among States in which there has been a marked decline of recent years in the ratio of physicians to population.”
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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.
