20 Facts About Schwester Selma

Schwester Selma never married, and resided in a room in the hospital until her last day.

Schwester Selma's mother died in childbirth when Selma was five years old, leaving five young orphans.

Schwester Selma received on-the-job training in the hospital's departments of internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and obstetrics.

The hospital recruited untrained workers, whom Schwester Selma outfitted in "overalls and hoods" to protect them from infection; she ordered all incoming patients washed and shaved over their entire bodies.

Schwester Selma introduced German standards of nursing to the wards, including white uniforms for all hospital personnel, changing of uniforms and bed sheets daily, and daily bathing of all patients.

Nevertheless, Schwester Selma worked 18-hour days, and expected her nurses and aides to display the same work ethic.

Schwester Selma trained and supervised all the nurses, operating-room nurses, and midwives in the hospital, to include not only teaching the former how to make hospital beds, how to diaper newborns but swaddle infants.

For many years, Schwester Selma was Dr Wallach's right-hand assistant in the areas of uterine curettages, tracheotomies, and ritual circumcisions, accompanied him on house calls, and stood in for him as hospital director when he was away.

Schwester Selma wrote in her memoir, "Above all they should remember and never forget that one has to try everything when dealing with the patient to cause him as little pain as possible and to spare no effort".

Schwester Selma's contract included a three-month vacation in Germany every three years, but she took advantage of that clause only twice, in 1922 and 1925.

Schwester Selma was the only operating-room nurse on duty during the 1929 Hebron massacre.

Specialists from throughout Jerusalem came to Shaare Zedek to operate on the wounded, and Schwester Selma assisted them for 23 hours without a break.

Schwester Selma displayed unceasing devotion to the running of the iron lung machines, teaching and supervising the untrained personnel who were recruited to work in the ward.

In 1934 Schwester Selma founded the Shaare Zedek Nursing School.

The idea was initially opposed by Dr Wallach, who worried that the school would emphasize theory over practical nursing, but Schwester Selma's curriculum proved him wrong.

Schwester Selma taught all the practical nursing classes in the school's early years.

Schwester Selma adopted as her personal motto a poem by Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, which she kept on the wall in her room:.

Schwester Selma often welcomed staff and patients for a chat in her sparsely furnished room, where she poured them cups of mint tea.

In 1974, at the age of 90, Schwester Selma was named a "Worthy of Jerusalem" by Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek.

Schwester Selma once received a diamond ring from a Holocaust survivor whose sister had given her the valuable item before she was deported, saying, "If I do not return, give it to a human being who has never married and has devoted her life to helping other people".