Centenarian doctor at last gets PhD denied by Nazis

A 102-year-old paediatrician will receive her doctorate from Hamburg University 77 years after the Nazis blocked it because she was Jewish.

Ingeborg Rapoport, a Berlin medical professor who retired more than three decades ago, was granted the PhD for a dissertation on diphtheria that she finished in 1938, aged 25.

Her exam forms at the time were marked with a yellow stripe because her mother was Jewish, and so she was barred from the crucial viva exam, where candidates are questioned, face to face, by a panel of academics.

Last year, her son, Tom, a Harvard medical professor, contacted Hamburg University and asked whether it would consider giving his mother her degree, but it insisted that she follow the rules and agree to a viva examination.

To prepare, Rapoport, an expert in neonatal medicine, spent months studying developments in diphtheria studies and passed the oral examination at her Berlin flat. Uwe Koch-Gromus, Hamburg University’s dean of medicine, who led the viva, said: ‘‘It was a very good test. Frau Rapoport has gathered notable knowledge about what’s happened since then. Particularly given her age, she was brilliant.’’

Rapoport, who emigrated, penniless, to the United States in 1938, qualified as a doctor and worked there until 1950. She returned to Germany with the man she had married in 1944, Samuel Mitja Rapoport, because the couple were under investigation by American authorities who suspected them of being communists.

She said that throughout her life she had felt slighted by the Nazi refusal of her degree. ‘‘My medical existence was turned to rubble. It was a shame for science and a shame for Germany,’’ she said. Thousands of ‘‘non-Aryan’’ students and professors were expelled from universities in the Third Reich and many were sent to death camps. Painful memories of the era had returned with her renewed studies, Rapoport said.

‘‘Studying made me remember how abandoned and uncertain I felt in 1938.’’

‘‘With this belated graduation we cannot make up for the injustice that has already occurred, but we can contribute to working through the darkest sides of German history at universities,’’ Koch-Gromus said.

‘‘I’ve been shockingly lucky in all this,’’ Rapoport said. ‘‘I had my best teachers in the US, I found my husband, I had my children.’’

My medical existence was turned to rubble. It was a shame for science and a shame for Germany.

Ingeborg Rapoport