Henrietta Szold הנרייטה סאלד
founder of Hadassah and Youth Aliyah
The daughter of a Baltimore rabbi and editor at the Jewish Publication Society, she spent thirty years correcting other people's books before beginning her own work. After a visit to Palestine in 1909, where she saw trachoma in the children, she gathered a women's organisation, Hadassah, in 1912, to establish nursing there.
From the two nurses sent in 1913 grew a hospital network that became the foundation of Israeli medicine. Szold moved to Jerusalem in 1920 and directed the health services of the yishuv.
After the Nazis came to power she led Youth Aliyah, the rescue of children without their parents. Between 1934 and 1948 more than twenty thousand children passed through her hands: met, placed in kibbutzim and schools, taught. She had no children of her own.
On the timeline
Places
Sources
Documents of the period
- Hadassah reports on the nurses' mission, 1913 — two nurses — the beginning of the hospital network
Basis: documents and evidence.