Page:My Disillusionment In Russia.djvu/246

 Museum. He especially called our attention to the Jewish hospital for crippled children.

I found the latter in charge of a cultivated and charming man, Dr. N——. For twenty years he had been head of the hospital and he took interest as well as pride in showing us about his institution and relating its history.

The hospital had formerly been one of the most famous in Russia, the pride of the local Jews who had built and maintained it. But within recent years its usefulness had become curtailed owing to the frequent changes of government. It had been exposed to persecution and repeated pogroms. Jewish patients critically ill were often forced out of their beds to make room for the favourites of this or that régime. The officers of the Denikin army were most brutal They drove the Jewish patients out into the street, subjected them to indignities and abuse, and would have killed them had it not been for the intercession of the hospital staff who at the risk of their own lives protected the sick. It was only the fact that the majority of the staff were Gentiles that saved the hospital and its inmates. But the shock resulted in numerous deaths and many patients were left with shattered nerves.