Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport, Earned Doctorate 8 Decades After Nazis Denied Her, Dies At 104
(JTA) — Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport, a German neonatologist who passed her doctoral defense exam nearly eight decades after she was denied the opportunity by the Nazis, has died at 104.
She reportedly died Thursday in Berlin. A funeral will be held in the German capital in May, her son told The Associated Press.
Syllm-Rapoport, a former professor of pediatrics and head of the neonatology department at Berlin’s prominent Charite Hospital who retired in 1973, passed the exam on May 13, 2015, at the University of Hamburg.
She completed her thesis on diphtheria in 1938, but was refused entrance to the oral exam by the Nazi authorities because her mother was Jewish.
Syllm-Rapoport immigrated to the United States in 1938 and was required to study for two additional years to be certified as a doctor, despite graduating from a German medical school. She married in 1946 and the couple returned to Germany in 1952 after her husband was persecuted by anti-communist efforts during the McCarthy era.
She is survived by four children, nine grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
