Inside AJHS: The Australian Fellowship of Jewish Doctors

The genesis of the Australian Fellowship of Jewish Doctors (AFJD) owed itself to its members’ collective belief and desire for the betterment of peoples’ welfare, irrespective of race or religion. Formed in 1955 during the post-World War II climate, the AFJD sought to combat the xenophobia commonplace in Australian professional bodies at the time, and particularly within the medical profession towards non-Anglo medical doctors.

The AFJD, as an organisation, effectively came into being only due to the efforts of the Australian Jewish Welfare Society (AJWS), formed in 1937 to support the emigration of Jews from Continental Europe during the period of progressive tension that culminated in the Second World War. Consequently, the AJWS and its efforts to integrate Jews into Australian society influenced the formation and philosophy of the AFJD.

By way of the White Australia Policy as well as other legislation and institutions within Australia at the time, non-Anglo medical doctors—especially those of Jewish heritage—who had emigrated from Continental Europe, faced difficulty obtaining their practising licenses. Many Jewish doctors were made to retrain and commit to additional years of tertiary study at institutions such as the Sydney Medical School, to prove their competency as medical doctors under Australian standards and interpretations at the time.

The AFJD assisted Jewish doctors by providing key information for medical registration, offering financial and relocation assistance, and ongoing support for professional development, amongst other initiatives. In the later years of the organisation’s existence, it continued to offer financial support for doctors—and not necessarily doctors of Jewish heritage—in the form of scholarships and grants for professional development.

In addition, the AFJD has collaborated with corresponding organisations in Australia to support medical efforts in Israel, for example, the “N.S.W. Friends of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem” in the form of exchanging developments in medical training and literature—an initiative welcomed in a country that was rapidly developing its own medical facilities and prowess that would not have been possible without the aid of the Jewish diaspora and charitable organisations around the world, one of them being the AFJD.

During my time as an intern at the Australian Jewish Historical Society, I had the opportunity to appraise a range of archive materials, from which, I ascertained the information I have outlined here. For the AFJD, this included newsletters sent by the organisation to its members, minutes of committee and AGM meetings in which topics of significance were discussed, together with collected correspondence between the AFJD and external organisations or people. The information preserved within these fascinating sources is now available to the public for viewing and personal research – AJHS Record ID 394.