Leo Eitinger MD: tribute to a Holocaust survivor, humane physician and friend of mankind

Born in Czechoslovakia, psychiatrist Leo Eitinger (1912-1996) became internationally recognized for research on his fellow concentration camp inmates. He graduated as an MD in 1937, but being Jewish was prohibited from practicing as a doctor. When the Nazis occupied the area he was forced to flee to Norway, where in 1940 he was again deprived of his right to practice medicine. In 1942 he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. There, as a physician inmate, he was able to help and in many cases save his fellow prisoners, not only with his medical skills but by falsifying prisoners' documents and hiding them from their Nazi captors. One of his patients was Elie Wiesel. Eitinger survived the camps but was forced to join a "death march." After the war he resumed medical practice in Norway, specializing in psychiatry. With his personal experience and knowledge of the suffering of camp survivors, he dedicated his life to studying the psychological effects of traumatic stress in different groups. Eitinger's academic contributions were crucial in the development of this area of research--namely, the effects of excessive stress, laying the foundations for the definition of post-traumatic stress disorder and the post-concentration camp syndrome, thus facilitating recognition of the medical and psychological post-war conditions of the survivors and their resultant disability pensions.