New Book - Jewish Doctors and the Holocaust: The Anatomy of Survival by Ross Halpin

A new book, Jewish Doctors and the Holocaust: The Anatomy of Survival, was published on January 15, 2019, by De Gruyter Publishing and Magnes Press.  In this book, Dr. Ross Halpin discovered that Jewish doctors survived an average of twenty months, many under the same horrendous conditions as ordinary prisoners. Despite their status as privileged prisoners’ Jewish doctors starved, froze, were beaten to death and executed. Many Holocaust survivors attest that luck, God and miracles were their saviours. The author’s thesis is that surviving Auschwitz for long periods was far more complex. Interweaving the stories of Jewish doctors before and during the Holocaust Halpin develops a model that explains the anatomy of survival. According to his model the genesis of survival of extreme adversity is the will to live and persistent drive to survive which must be accompanied by the necessities of life, specific personal traits, such as resilience and defence mechanisms. For survival all four must continue to exist at the same time.

​"This is a 'must read' book in medical and allied health professional schools." Avi Ohry, MD Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Israel

"After meticulous research, Ross Halpin presents a pioneering study that intertwines fragments of testimonial accounts, documentary archival evidence and conceptual frameworks. What emerges is a compelling model of description and interpretation of the limited chances of survival of Jewish doctors in Auschwitz, one of the epicentres of the Holocaust." Konrad Kwiet, Emeritus Professor, Resident Historian, Sydney Jewish Museum, Sydney, Australia

"The author's description of Auschwitz's medical world is an illuminating and brilliant synthesis and his final chapter, 'Anatomy of Survival', a masterpiece where one can see his own contribution to research at its best." Etienne Lepicard, Bet Hagat and the Israeli National Council for Bioethics, Jerusalem, Israel (Prologue)