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Shimon Theodore Winter, Sam to his friends, was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1916 to Gershon and Sarah Weinberg, who were born in Bialystok. He grew up in Leeds, England, brother to Jo, Esther and Helen. He completed his medical studies at the Medical School of Leeds University in 1939. As an enthusiastic Zionist and with a high level of Jewish identification, he was active in the Bonim movement (a traditional Zionist movement) and served as head of the Jewish Students' Union in England. As a sign of identification with the "visionary of the state," Theodore Benjamin Zeev Herzl, he added the name Theodore to his name. He was drafted into the British Air Force (RAF) in 1940 during WWII and was stationed in a base near Cambridge, a base from which planes left to bomb sites in Germany. In July 1942 a plane returning from a bombing mission had an emergency landing and went up in flames. Dr. Winter went into the burning plane to save the crew and was badly burned. He was awarded a citation of honor (MBE) in the name of King George VI, for his bravery. Starting in 1943 and for two years he served as a doctor in the British air force in Aden, Yemen and Libya. Many of the photographs in this album are of the Jews of Yemen, whom he met in the transit camps where they were staying while waiting to go to Israel. He treated them on a volunteer basis. These Jews came from Yemen and were in a bad way both economically and medically. Their condition continued to deteriorate during their stay in Aden. A delegation of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) arrived from Israel. They began dealing with the Jews in Yemen in a professional and organized fashion. Professor Kligler headed the delegation along with a staff of nurses, including Zipporah Makov-Freidman who ran the camp. There were about 1,000 people in the camp in 1944. The Joint provided food, organized classes for the children and free time activities. ('Palestine Post' 9/6/1944). Within a short time all the medicines and medical supplies were depleted. Two members of the delegation took initiative and walked into the officer's dining hall in the nearby British army base during lunch time and shouted in Yiddish, "Is there anybody Jewish here?" Within seconds Shimon Winter came up to them to ask what they wanted. He took them to the medical supplies closets and provided them with the necessary materials. And from then on he volunteered as a doctor in the transit camp in the afternoons after he completed his work in the British army camp. (This story was told after his death). He later served one more year as a doctor in the British army camp in Cairo and in Israel. In 1946 Shimon married Shoshana, the daughter of Zvi Aryeh and Bluma Werner from Haifa. He started working in the children's ward in the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. He was sent by the Hagannah and the hospital to care for the sick and wounded in Misgav Ladach Hospital in the Old City which was under siege. Dr. Winter took care of arranging that the British would authorize the entrance of the Hadassah medical team to the Old City. The team included doctors, surgeons and emergency room nurses. In 1948 Dr. Chaim Shiba asked Dr. Winter to establish a Medical Service for the Israeli Air Force, as he was the only doctor in Israel with experience in this field. He established all the guidelines including those for a pilot's health examination. He concentrated on concern for the health of the team, their security and their working conditions. For two years he was part of Aharon Remez's team that established the Israeli Air Force. At this point Dr. Winter decided to go back to pediatrics to work with those who need help the most. He studied in London and New Castle, in the children's ward specializing in preventative medicine. He believed in this approach and worked for it all his life. When he returned to Israel he started working at Rambam Hospital in Haifa and afterwards directed the children's ward in Rothschild Hospital (today Beni Zion) until his retirement in 1984. In between these two positions, he was sent to Tiberias to take care of the large number of new Olim in the city. His approach to his work was to encourage vaccination and educating the local population, by the nurses of the TIpot Halav, who provided guidance to the mothers who were not familiar with the conditions in Israel. His major concern was the family and the children. All the children were his friends and he saw the mothers as helpers in caring for her sick child. He worked hard to allow mothers to sleep with their children who admitted to the hospital. Dr. Winter was one of the people who established the medical school at the Technion. He taught there and became a professor because of his scientific and clinical work. He wrote about the ethics and history of medicine and many of his articles serve as a basis for research until today. In his teaching and on his daily rounds, Dr. Winter constantly pushed for an understanding of the foundations of the disease process and the need for accuracy in diagnosis, thus creating constant learning and testing at any given moment. Could there be another diagnosis? Is this the story of what he says? And was the doctor's order indeed carried out and how? He approached each topic with observation and inquiry: What should we do and why? Is it helpful or requires improvement? Many of the students and residents that worked with him in the wards saw him as a model for their own professional life. He encouraged the doctors to develop independent areas of interest and helped them to be able to specialize in the area of their choice. Many of his students are leaders in their areas of interest in the field of pediatrics today. Preventative medicine was one of his guiding principles throughout his professional life. The doctors in his department studied child development in addition to learning Arabic so as to improve communication with his patients and their families. He established the first Center for Genetic Counseling in Israel (today it is called the Shimon Winter Center for Human Genetics). He saw this as a way to prevent disease and to provide guidance to parents. He also founded the Hannah Hushi Center for Child Development alongside the department in the hospital. He researched the field of infant nutrition, including adding iron to baby formulas. Dr. Friar, Head of the Children's Unit at Shaarei Tzedek Hospital said:" The one area in which we did not see 'eye to eye', was nutrition. Dr. Winter recommended foods that were available to the general population, whereas I thought that we should recommend only the best foods. One could say, about Dr. Winter, 'within my people, I am sitting'". When he retired from his work in Haifa, he and his wife moved to Jerusalem where he devoted his time to building a clinic for children with spina bifida at the Alyn Hospital. At the same time he accepted the job of Director of the Mother and Child Unit in the Ministry of Health until his death in 1989. Shimon was a modest man, inquisitive and broad minded, always willing to help, to give and guidance, loving people and children and a warm family man. Shimon and Shoshana had three children: Rivka, Zvi and Yehoshua; two daughters-in-law- Esti and Tami; a son –in-law, Yaakov; ten grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren. Written by: Rivka Weisberg (nee Winter) and Tamar Winter (nee Zinger) January 2018. اقرأ أكثر