The Council also managed the Hospitals Department run by Wiśniewski
and Samuel Arkusz.¹¹⁴⁴ At the end of October, internal disease and gynaecological
wards were opened in the building of the former Jewish hospital.¹¹⁴⁵ As
there was no medical equipment, the Council bought 30 beds, while the minimum
amount of bedding and linen was taken from the Jewish population.
A pharmacy was opened by the hospital (it was very poorly stocked though) as
well as an outpatient clinic, which managed to develop its activity on a rather
large scale. The following physicians: Dr Seid, Dr Lubelski, Dr Płocki, and
Dr Gross-Schinagel¹¹⁴⁶ worked in the hospital and in the outpatient clinic.
The Council also developed a certain welfare/protective activity. It maintained
the Old Age Home¹¹⁴⁷ and opened a soup kitchen in the Talmud Torah
building. Mrs Marta Cwas ran the latter. The soup kitchen operated for
4 weeks, from late October. It issued 100 meals per day, some of which were
free, while the rest cost 30 or 10 groszes. The Department of Labour financed
the kitchen from its own income. The Kalisz mikvah functioned periodically
during the operation of the Council.
As for the German authorities’ attitude toward the Council, it cannot be
fully determined. On the one hand, the Germans acknowledged the Council
as the official Jewish representative and they turned to it with all their various
demands, which the Council satisfied [8] completely. On the other hand,
there were instances showing that the authorities’ attitude toward it was completely
different. One time two Council members (Herman and one other
man) were summoned to the Gestapo. They arrived at 11 a.m. and they were
1144 Samuel Arkusz, active in Kalisz Jewish Gymnastics Society, member of Poale’ Tsiyon, city councillor of 1919; see A. Pakentreger, Żydzi w Kaliszu, pp. 135–136.
1145 The hospital was established in 1836 on the initiative of Dr Michał Morgenstern. In 1837 it moved into the building at Piskorzewska Street 21 located near the mikvah. The hospital building and the mikvah were probably destroyed by the Germans while they were filling in a branch of the Prosna River.
1146 Debora Gross-Schinagel (1908–1944), born in London, graduated in medicine in Vilna. On 21 November 1939 she became the director of the Jewish hospital, where she worked later as practically the only physician until the spring of 1941. She died in Auschwitz in 1944 with her young son Jakub and husband Artur.
1147 The Old Age Home was located at Stawiszyńska Street 41. The building was erected in 1906. The association called “The Szymon and Żaneta Peretz, Józef Dawid, and Elena Majzner Old Age Home” was established in 1911. After WWII the building housed a kindergarten. It was dismantled in the 1980s.
