With dreams and will from the Warsaw ghetto

The afternoon sun filters into the living room of Nina Einhorn's home in Stockholm. The 77-year-old doctor sits surrounded by photo albums and memories. A close friend at her side makes her laugh at an old joke. For a moment, the pain of both her cancer and her loss eases. The warmth of friendship brings comfort and the flame of life in Nina's eyes flares up once again.

Nina Einhorn admitted that she never really regained her joy in life after her husband Jerzy passed away.

– I can't… the joy of life is gone, she said sadly summer 2001. Still, she refused to give up. “I am a social being”, she also used to remind us – friendship was her way of coping with grief and keeping the spark of life alive. In all contexts, she was seen as the social engine that spread energy around her.

Opposing refugee in medical studies

The passion that carried Nina through the final stages of her life had been ignited many decades earlier. In 1946, she arrived in Sweden with ambitions to become a doctor and her childhood sweetheart Jerzy by her side, but the path into the new country was anything but straightforward. As Jewish survivors, they encountered prejudice and suspicion. Swedish authorities initially refused to allow Nina and her fellow students to continue their medical studies – they were only admitted as extra students. Even then, they were stopped for a while during their education. But the setbacks only fueled her fighting spirit.

Finally, Nina and Jerzy managed to complete their studies at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. They married in 1949 and a few years later they had their daughter Lena and son Stefan. The survivor Nina now became a real doctor in Sweden – and she put her whole soul into the profession. Over the following decades, she helped countless patients as a gynecologist and oncologist. Nina's expertise in gynecological cancer research made her internationally recognized, but even more important was the warmth she spread in every encounter. In caring, she found her calling: to give hope to others.

Childhood among growing shadows

How could this strength and empathy take such deep root? The answer lies in Nina's early years in Poland. She was born in 1925 in Lódz into an intellectual Jewish family. Her father Artur was an economist and her mother Fanja had herself begun medical studies as a young woman. Even as a little girl, Nina dreamed of becoming a doctor, just like her mother. Nina never had that ambition. Her childhood was safe and loving, but the shadows in Europe grew darker and darker.

The losses and horrors of the Holocaust

Nina's teenage years were shattered when World War II broke out. She was only fourteen when the Nazis forced her family into the Warsaw ghetto. Yet the young girl did not give up her studies – she secretly took her matriculation exam in the ghetto in the summer of 1942, risking her life. Soon after, the deportations began. Nina's father was taken away by the Nazis and murdered. When the German soldiers were about to liquidate the prisoners in the ghetto in the spring of 1943, her brother Rudolf smuggled his sister out in a hospital transport during the commotion. Nina escaped the same fate as so many others and stayed hidden until Warsaw was liberated. But a Nazi bombing during the fighting in 1944 killed her mother Fanja. Her mother had hidden with others in a church that was blown up. The war took almost everything from Nina – parents, family, an entire life. Only she and her brother Rudolf survived.

Can we still imagine little Nina at the kitchen table in Łódź, blissfully unaware of the coming storms of history? She is full of joy for life and listens eagerly when her mother Fanja tells her about her medical studies. A spark shines in the girl's eyes – the dream of one day becoming a doctor herself and helping others. And it was that spark that carried Nina Einhorn through a long, dramatic and inspiring life.

This fighter died of cancer after having experienced so much as a clearly shining star.

 

Source:

https://skbl.se/sv/artikel/NinaEinhorn0

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/RxrXAA/nina-einhorn-dod-i-cancer