Schwester Selma
| Schwester Selma | |
|---|---|
Schwester Selma, circa 1954
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| Born |
Selma Mayer February 3, 1884 Hanover, Germany |
| Died | February 5, 1984 (aged 100) Jerusalem, Israel |
| Occupation | Head nurse, Shaare Zedek Hospital |
Selma Mayer, known as Schwester Selma (German for "Sister Selma" or "Nurse Selma") (February 3, 1884 – February 5, 1984) was the head nurse at the original Shaare Zedek Hospital on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem for nearly 50 years. For many years she was the right-hand assistant of the hospital's founding director, Dr. Moshe Wallach. Working long hours and with limited infrastructure, she trained and supervised all personnel at the hospital from 1916 to the 1930s, and founded the Shaare Zedek School of Nursing in 1934. She never married, and resided in a room in the hospital until her last day. In her later years she became known as the "Jewish Florence Nightingale" for her decades of selfless devotion to patient welfare.
Selma Mayer was born on February 3, 1884 in Hanover, Germany, to a poor Jewish family. Her mother died in childbirth when Selma was five years old, leaving five young orphans. Selma later wrote, "Because I lost my mother very early and therefore had a rather difficult youth, a strong need grew in me to give people that which I had missed so much: mother-love and love of human beings. Therefore I chose the profession of nursing".
In 1906 she began working as a nurse at the Salomon Heine Hospital in Hamburg. She received on-the-job training in the hospital's departments of internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics. In 1913 she and another nurse passed the government's nursing licensing exams, becoming the first Jewish nurses to receive a German State Diploma.
In 1890 the Frankfurt-based Central Committee for the Construction of a Jewish Hospital in Jerusalem sent Dr. Moshe Wallach, a German-Jewish doctor, to Palestine to open a Jewish hospital. In 1902 he opened Shaare Zedek Hospital on Jaffa Road, the first Jewish hospital in the New City. Wallach began with two trained European nurses, Schwester Stybel and Schwester Van Gelder, but one quit due to the "primitive conditions" that existed at Shaare Zedek in those years and the other fled to Germany during World War I. In dire need of a head nurse, Wallach returned to Europe in 1916, during World War I. He was impressed with the similar organizational structure of the Salomon Heine Hospital in Hamburg, and asked the head nurse there if she could spare one of her staff. The 32-year-old Selma Mayer was recommended, and agreed to a three-year contract to fulfill her war service in Palestine.
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