FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY: THE JEWISH MEDICAL RELIEF FUND IN GREECE

 Even before the close of World War II, Jewish relief organisations began to seek volunteers for post-war relief work in shattered Europe. In Australia, Jewish communities established the Jewish Relief Unit Fund which aimed to provide medical officers, pathologists, teachers, pharmacists and welfare workers for service in countries blighted by the war, under the direction of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). It was decided, in consultation with UNRRA that the first team funded by the Jewish Relief Unit Fund would serve in Greece, provided that its members undertook to abstain from “political activity, speculation, profiteering and anything that might discredit UNRRA.” According to a contemporary article in the Australian Jewish News, the Jewish community was subsidising the team to the tune of £5,000.

The team comprised of eight members, some of whom had faced persecution in their own countries prior to the war. All were motivated by a desire to assist the afflicted. Dr Ernst Wasser had served in a children’s hospital in Berlin and was a specialist in children’s diseases before being forced to flee Nazi Germany. He ended up in Australia where his qualifications were not recognised owing to his poor knowledge of English. For him, Greece offered the opportunity to continue in his vocation.

Theodore Wolff, a manager of weaving firms in Germany, and the founder of a welfare organisation to assist impoverished Jews in Berlin also fled Nazi persecution. He went on to serve as quartermaster in an Australian internees’ camp and was Adjutant and Welfare Officer in the relief team.

Ernst Hermann, a German medical student, saw his studies interrupted by the onset of the Second World War. He managed to flee the Nazis and eventually made his way to Australia, becoming partner of an engineering firm. He served as Transport Officer to the relief team.

Victor Lambert, joined the team because had previously served as a teacher in Greece and could act as interpreter. However, upon his arrival in the country, the team soon realised that he spoke an obscure island dialect that was barely intelligible to Athenians and that his English was extremely poor. This notwithstanding, he only remained on the team for fortnight after arriving in Greece, being dismissed by UNRRA owing to what they termed his “intense political bias.” He chose to remain in Greece and it is believed that he took part in the Greek Civil War, on the side of the Greek Democratic Army.

The other members of the team were women. Elizabeth Penizek, a Czechoslovakian language teacher and physical education instructor was conducting women’s health classes and studying science at Melbourne University when she volunteered. Lorna Poynter was a surgical and general nurse as well as a midwife and operating-theatre sister Julia Caminer was a language teacher while Molly Kerr was a canteen supervisor in a government munitions family.

As the team embarked for Greece on 2 February 1946, their UNRRA liaison, Constance Duncan, wrote to UNRRA in Athens expressing her confidence in the team, basing her belief on the fact that many of them had personally suffered before and during the war and were motivated by a desire to provide succour to the suffering  Greek people. Prior to their embarkation, according to the Australian Jewish Herald, they were welcomed not only by the Sydney Jewish community with Rabbi Dr I Porush outlining the spiritual harmony between Greece and Israel, but also by the Sydney Greek community and Greek Consul-General Dr Vrisakis.

Arriving in Athens, the team was shocked by the prevailing conditions. As Elizabeth Penizek wrote:

“Our first morning in Athens was one of great surprise. We had read accounts of starving Greece and had expected to see stark poverty everywhere. However… there were shops literally bulging with all kinds of delicious foods, cake-shops displaying piles of rich cream cakes… we saw… equisite dresses, shoes, jewellery and beautiful materials displayed…. If this was poor starving Greece, why had we been sent here…? Ninety percent of the people of Athens could not afford to buy even the basis necessities… so, all the food that we saw was available only to the 10 per cent of wealthy Athenians.”

After some sightseeing, the team departed for Volos in Thessaly and were placed under the direction of American UNRRA personnel. To their dismay, the team was expected only to serve in an advisory role to local Greek authorities and noted that most of the time that advice was not heeded, owing to local interests or because villagers were unwilling to abandon traditional practices in hygiene. The practices of Greek officials also mystified them, with the governor of Volos prison seeking to assuage their concerns over the health implications of cell overcrowding by assuring them that the problem would be solved quickly, given that by the next day, many prisoners would be dead. Their campaign to stamp out malaria was frustrated by the fact that most insecticide sprayers had been arrested as suspected communists and one Greek official even confided that since Greeks had always suffered from malaria, he could not understand why they insisted they had come all that way to fight it. Lorna Poynter however, was able to advise on hospital organisation and supplies in hospitals in Larissa and Trikkala.

The Greek Civil War, by this stage raging in the countryside, also impinged upon the team’s work, affecting its members psychologically. Elizabeth Penizek lamented: “The situate is very depressing… Greece is one of the unfortunate places where the conflict between Russia and the West is being fought out…” She also commented on how the brutality they witnessed affected their own political beliefs: “Whatever our political creed, it was severely shaken in Greece. Those who had idealised Communism felt bewildered at [their].. ruthlessness… while one of the staunchest supporters of the other side was almost ready to join the communists… after… a fortnight. Whatever we attempted to do in the way of relief or rehabilitation, we were always up against the political situation.”

Lorna Poynter also saw the violent political situation as a chief hindrance in providing effective relief work: “As for the political situation, enough to mention that, with the approval of the authorities, the blood-dripping head of a so-called Communist bandit has been exhibited in the market square as a warning to all who do not fall in with the ruling class. Highwaymen belonging to right-wing organisations can levy taxes and stage hold-ups with impunity. Motor vehicles, including those working in the …campaign against malaria, are pressed by these bandits into transporting stolen goods and contraband.”

She also recorded how the War, the political instability and the vast disparity in incomes had affected the people of Greece: “The whole atmosphere was oppressive and sickening. You felt and saw the inertness of the people, who through years of war had lost all sense of civic spirit. They take it for granted that civil servants can be bribed; and I have never hear members of a nation speak so detrimentally of their fellow-countrymen as here.”

Volos in particular struck her has a town that barely belonged to the twentieth century: “The dirty square at the entrance to the town was covered with filthy Gypsy tents. Many horses and donkeys mingled with dirty half-naked children. Nobody seemed to bother about anything.”

The team also found itself stuck in the middle of disputes between competing authorities. In their attempt to organise a summer camp for the most impoverished children of the area so they could rest for a few weeks in safety, they came up against the opposition of the Nomarch, who banned the initiative, over the objections of the Bishop. In order to break the deadlock, Elizabeth Penizek announced that the British army unit nearby had endorsed the camp and promised protection. This endorsement was subsequently and luckily obtained from a British major and the team rallied Greek engineers, doctors and teachers to set up the camp, a wonderful experience for some three hundred war-shattered children.

Later in the year, the team, except for Lambert, departed for Germany to continue relief work there in displaced persons camps. In assessing their work, an UNRRA official opined positively: “The spirit underlying the team enabled them to work most effectively with the Greek people.” The contribution of the Jewish Medical Relief Fund and its team in Greece, however modest, should be appreciated and never forgotten.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 8 February 2025