Visionaries from LVIV - (Jews of Poland) by Ewa Herbst (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Year 2023 marked 120 years of the Lazarus Jewish Hospital in Lviv (Lwóoacute;w/Lemberg). This richly illustrated book is a tribute to its place in the once-vibrant Jewish community of the city and in the society at large during the period 1903-1939. Visionaries from Lviv presents the hospital's history and its fascinating architecture, its doctors, and its founder, a prominent local Jewish philanthropist Maurycy Lazarus, with the background of the Jewish life in Lviv.

The volume also details the history of medicine and medical education in Habsburg Galicia prior to the hospital's founding, Jewish access to the medical profession, and the impact of Jewish doctors on the path to modernity. It also shows the struggle of women to become doctors. A moving and timely book with contributions from leading historians, scholars, and medical professionals, Visionaries from Lviv is an ode to the once thriving Jewish community in Lviv and a testament to how one person's dream and commitment can impact the lives of so many.

This publication was made possible with support from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund and Gesher Galicia.

Review Quotes

"This book is much more than the simple story of a building and institution. The text-augmented by a wealth of wonderful illustrations--plunges the reader into the vivid maelstrom of the multifaceted Jewish society that grew up and gave birth to one of the few surviving physical monuments of prewar Jewish Lviv. We meet extraordinary individuals stretching back centuries, key among them Maurycy Lazarus, the hospital's founder, a banker, businessman, politician, and philanthropist whose extended family encapsulated the intensely varied currents of a brutally vanished world."

--Ruth Ellen Gruber, Director of Jewish Heritage Europe

"This moving and timely book describes the establishment and history of the Lazarus Jewish Hospital in Lviv (Lwóoacute;w/Lemberg). Founded in 1898 by a prominent local Jewish philanthropist, Maurycy Lazarus, it was considered the most modern hospital in Habsburg Galicia and served both the Jewish community and the larger society until the outbreak of war in 1939. It still exists and today houses a municipal maternity hospital. With contributions from four authors, the book provides a clear picture of the importance of the hospital, its history and architecture, and of the medical staff who served in it. It also depicts what preceded its establishment--the state of medicine and medical education in Galicia, Jewish access to the medical profession there, as well as the struggle of women to become doctors. It is essential reading for all those interested in the history of East-Central Europe and of the role of Jews in medicine in this area."

--Antony Polonsky, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University, Chief Historian, Global Education Outreach Project, Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw

"A collection of well-documented chapters presents the fascinating history of a Jewish community coping with the challenges of modernity in a multiethnic environment. The Jewish hospital building was a "product of the minds of a Jewish philanthropist, Ukrainian master builder, and a Polish architect with very different political views." Its story demonstrates how Jewish doctors and businessmen, along with other members of the multiethnic society of Lviv, played a significant part in the development of science, welfare, and culture in Lviv. It is an important contribution to the history of medicine in eastern Europe and an exciting memorial to a Jewish world that was destroyed in the Holocaust."

--Israel Bartal, Emeritus Professor of Modern Jewish History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

About the Author

Ewa Herbst, PhD is a great-granddaughter of Maurycy Lazarus, the founder of the Jewish Hospital in Lviv. She is an electrical and biomedical engineer, a former visiting professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and at Tulane University in New Orleans, principal research engineer at a biomedical instrument company, as well as CEO of her own research and development firm. In addition to publications in her area of research and several patents, she is the author of the book Dokument podróży (Travel Document), a story in poems and prose of her emotional turmoil after being forced out of Poland as a result of the wave of antisemitism that swept the country in 1967-69. She is also the author of "Herman Diamand--on the 90th Anniversary of His Death" (Kwartalnik Historii Żydów / Jewish History Quarterly, 287, no. 3 [2023]), an article about her great-uncle, one of the leading Galician and Polish politicians.

Anna Jakimyszyn-Gadocha, Dr. habil. (Institute of Jewish Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków) is a historian and a specialist in Judaic studies, and author of the following books: Żydzi krakowscy w dobie Rzeczypospolitej Krakowskiej. Status prawny. Przeobrażenia gminy. System edukacyjny (2008), Mykwa. Dzieje żydowskiej laźni rytualnej przy ul. Szerokiej w Krakowie (2012), Yiddish-English-Polish Dictionary (2016), W trosce o zdrowie żydowskiej spoleczności Lwowa (1918-1939) (2021), and numerous articles. She is also the translator of Statut krakowskiej gminy żydowskiej z 1595 roku i jego uzupelnienia (2005). She is the co-editor of דפולין ממרא Mamre de-Polin. Księga jubileuszowa dedykowana Profesorowi Edwardowi Dąbrowie (2021) and of Anna Rutkowski's Polish translation of Memoirs of Glickl of Hammeln (Glikl. Siedem ksiąg. Pamiętniki z lat 1691-1719) (2021).

Sergey R. Kravtsov, PhD is a research fellow at the Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Lviv, Ukraine, he was trained as an architect in his native city. In 1993, he received his doctoral degree from the Institute for the Theory and History of Architecture in Moscow, and moved to Israel in 1994. His research areas are the history of town planning, architectural theory, and the history of synagogue architecture. He is the author of Di Gildene Royze: The Turei Zahav Synagogue in L'viv (2011) and In the Shadow of Empires: Synagogue Architecture in East Central Europe (2018), and a co-author of Synagogues in Lithuania: A Catalogue (2010-2012) and Synagogues in Ukraine: Volhynia (2017). He has also published about ninety essays in his research areas and edited and co-edited three books.

Andrew Zalewski, MD is a physician and former professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He has authored two books on Austrian Galicia: Galician Trails: The Forgotten Story of One Family (2012) and Galician Portraits: In Search of Jewish Roots (2014), both of which reconstruct the story of his ancestors in a broader historical context. As the vice president of Gesher Galicia, he led archival research on Jewish educational access, in part supported by a grant from the Republic of Austria. His writings focus on Jewish cultural transformation, the impact of Jewish physicians, and Jewish legal rights in Galicia.

Dr. Zalewski is a frequent speaker at cultural and academic institutions in the US and abroad. His Gratz College course on the Jews of Galicia examines the internal and external forces behind the Jewish path to modernity. Unique archival records provide the background for his in-depth description of multiethnic Galicia.