Bernard Bornstein (1900–1977): His life and contribution to Polish and Israeli neurology

Introduction

World War II had a traumatic impact on the history of Polish neurology. Both German and Russian occupants sought to exterminate the Polish intelligentsia, including physicians and academic staff. Moreover, for reasons that require further investigation, pre-War neurology in Poland was more dominated by Jewish physicians than any other medical field. The names of Edward Flatau and Samuel Goldflam established a significant position of Polish neurology. More than 70% Polish neurologists commemorated in Eufemiusz Herman's monograph were Jewish. ¹ The vast majority of them perished in the Holocaust.

The life path of Bernard Bornstein is somewhat different. As one of the few Polish-Jewish neurologists he managed to survive the Holocaust. Shortly after, he moved to Palestine and continued his career in Tel Aviv. His scientific achievements in many aspects continue the tradition of pre-War, European school of neurology: based on a thorough investigation, not avoiding philosophical questions, covering a vast range of neurological and neuropsychiatric problems.

Early years, education, and medical practice in Cracow

Bernard Bornstein was born on 11 September 1900 in Tarnów in Galicia, Poland—then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as son of merchant Samuel Leib Bornstein and his wife Natalia (Gitel, Nicha) Neugasser (1874–1944). ² His parents married in 1892. He had four brothers—Naftali (1893), Lezer (1895), Jakób (1897), and Sigfried (1902), but little is known about them; probably he was the only one who pursued the medical studies. He grew up in his home town.

After graduating from gymnasium in Cracow even though he had the opportunity to study at the Jagiellonian University in this city (at the time, there were no official limits for admissions of students of Jewish origin) he decided to study medicine abroad: first, in the Charles University in Prague, and then at the University of Vienna from the summer semester of 1922 until the summer semester of 1924. Among his teachers were internists Hans Eppinger (1879–1946) and Franz Chvostek (1864–1944), surgeons Julius Hochenegg (1859–1940) and Anton Eiselsberg (1860–1939), laryngologist Heinrich Neumann (1873–1939), specialist in forensic medicine Albin Haberda (1868–1933), ophthalmologist Josef Meller (1874–1968), bacteriologist Friedrich Silberstein (1888–1975) dermatologist Johann Heinrich Rille (1864–1956), and most importantly, Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857–1940) for neurology and psychiatry. ³

He was promoted to doctor of medicine on 13 May 1925. In August 1926 he nostrificated his diploma at the Iagiellonian University in Cracow. ⁴ The same year (November 9) he married Amalia Neufeld. ⁵ Bornstein worked in the neuropsychiatric ward of St Lazarus Hospital in Cracow at Skawińska Street for 15 years. He lived under the address of Basztowa 10 in the downtown of Cracow.

World War II

As for all Jews living in Poland, everything changed in September 1939. German troops took the city six days after the beginning of World War II. During the Nazi occupation (1939–1945), Cracow was the capital of the General Government (Figures 1 and 2).

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Figure 1.

Dr Bernard Bornstein in a pharmacy in the Cracow ghetto (1942). The pharmacy “Pod Orłem” was the place for conspiratorial meetings and clandestine aid for Jews living in the ghetto.

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Figure 2.

First page of Dr Bornstein questionnaire.

Jewish physicians who lived in Cracow had to complete an application questionnaire to the medical chamber and Bornstein filled application (from September 1940) has been preserved to this day in the National Archives in Cracow. ⁶ In March 1941, the German occupier confined about 60,000 Jews in the Cracow ghetto. Bernard Bornstein, his wife, his daughter Sabina, and his mother were among them. ⁷ In the ghetto, Bornstein together with Dr Julian Aleksandrowicz ran the hospital ward for the chronically ill and convalescents at Józefińska Street, with 50 beds (main hospital had 120 beds). The hospital was dramatically overcrowded, housing up to 500 patients. Thanks to Bornstein and Aleksandrowicz, during one of the deportations from the ghetto in June 1942, circa 470 people found shelter in the hospital and survived. The ward worked until the liquidation of the ghetto, that is, 13–14 March 1943. ⁸ Other ghetto prisoners were killed in the concentration camps in Płaszów, Bełżec, and Auschwitz. As a result of this actions, only about 1000 Cracow Jews survived the World War II.

Bornstein and Dr Józef Nussenfeld, another physician from Cracow ghetto, were transported to Plaszów camp, managed by notorious war criminal Amon Göth. The actual management of the hospital belonged to German physicians who did no care for sick at all and merely selected the terminally ill and the old to the gas chambers. Jewish physicians were persecuted and harassed for no reason. ⁹ On the day of the camp's liquidation of Płaszów camp, 6 August 1944, Bornstein was transported to Mauthausen concentration camp, where he was imprisoned since 10 August 1944. ¹⁰ His mother was killed in Auschwitz in May 1944. Fate of his daughter Sabina remains unknown, but most likely she did not survive the war.

After the war, when Bornstein survived the camp and was sure that all his family perished, he lived with a Polish woman. Then he heard that his wife survived and lives with a man in Antwerpen. He apologized his female friend and went alone to Belgium, where he met with his wife Amalia and her friend. Around 1946 the three of them immigrated to Palestine and lived together until their death. ¹¹

Initially Bornstein worked at Zamenhoff's outpatient clinic in Tel Aviv part-timer. When the Workers’ Sick Fund decided to open a neurology ward at Beilinson Hospital (Petach-Tikva) he was offered the job to head it.

His lectures attracted large audience and he was known for his theatrical performance of neurological disorders. Those who knew him personally, admired his extensive knowledge in psychology, philosophy, and art. Bernard Bornstein died on May 2, 1975 in Tel Aviv and was buried at Petah Tikva Cemetery. While dying in his hospital bed he wondered, whether his life was “as if” which leads to supposition, that the philosophy of Hans Veihinger was close to him. ¹² Edna Kott recalled that the last book he read before his death was Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed. ¹¹

Scientific work

Full list of Bornstein's publications has over 120 works. ¹² In the first period of his scientific activity, before the outbreak of World War II, he produced 17 papers, mostly in Polish journals, but some of them in German language in Viennese medical journals. He dealt with pure neurological disorders, like brain traumas, ¹³ subarachnoidal hemorrhages ¹⁴ and neurodermatomyositis, ¹⁵ but the research work also concerned issues on the borderline of neurology and psychiatry: epidemiology of general paralysis among Jews, ¹⁶ cases of general paralysis with catatonic symptomes, ¹⁷ narcolepsy, ¹⁸ and newly introduced Manfred Sakel’s method of treatment of schizophrenia with insulin comas.^19,20 This was in line with neurological practice in Poland before the war—in most university centers the clinics of neurology and psychiatry were connected, and neurologists undertook treatment of patients with psychiatric symptoms, especially milder, outpatient cases. Bornstein belonged both to the Polish Psychiatric Society and the Polish Neurological Society.

Between 1939 and 1948 his scientific activity diminished for obvious reasons: his only article from this period was about the history of Jewish hospital in Cracow ghetto. ⁸ It was only after 1949 and his immigration to Palestine, when he published his observations about phantom phenomenon observed among amputees. ²¹ His later articles concerned very different topics in the area of neuropsychiatry: epilepsy, ²² restless leg sydrome, ²³ prosopagnosia, ²⁴ neurodegenarative disorders (Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration, formerly called Hallervorden–Spatz disease),^25,26 myasthenia gravis. ²⁷ Guillain-Barre syndrome, ²⁸ subacute sclerosing leucoencephalitis, ²⁹ Hand-Schuller-Christian disease, ³⁰ neuropathy in cancer patients, ³¹ etc. He was interested in the genetical basis of neurologic disorders and investigated prevalence of some neurological diseases (muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis) among different ethnic groups in Israel. His work coauthored with Alter, Halpern, Kurland, Leibowitz, and Silberstein about the prevalence of multiple sclerosis among immigrants and native inhabitants in Israel ³² is Bornstein's most widely cited work. Among his associates were Milton Alter, Edna Kott, Lipman Halpern, Hava Sroka, Uri Leibowitz, Amos Korczyn, and more.