Dr. Edward Barsky on his way to Spain, 1937. Colorized.

To the Editors:

I found the online session on Dr. Eddie Barsky (February 11) to be very interesting, even though I knew about some of the people who spoke, and I was familiar with much, but not all, of the information that was presented. I didn’t “raise my hand” because much of the material I had jotted down prior to the session was of a personal nature—not necessarily of interest to the group concerned with political history. Still, I am sharing it here, in case it is of use to anyone who is writing about Eddie.

As I explained in a previous letter to the editors, Eddie Barsky was a close friend of my father, Dr. Benjamin Segal, an OB-GYN who delivered many of the “red diaper babies” in New York City and worked with Dr. Barsky on various medical and political projects.

Many people addressed Dr. Barsky as “Eddie” and my father as “Ben” (Segal). But when they’d meet it was always “Edward” and “Benjamin,” with a twinkle in their eyes and a smile on their lips. Both Edward (1895-1975) and Benjamin (1898-1973) prepared for their professional lives in the same way, attending Townsend Harris High School and City College, long before it became part of CUNY. (I noticed that Dr. Barsky’s attendance at the College was not mentioned in the Barsky issue of the Volunteer [Dec. 2024]. This probably should be checked in CCNY archives.) Usually, good students were admitted to “City” after their junior year at Townsend Harris, which was located on the City College campus. (The “City” student cafeteria was known for the space it provided for lively left-wing political discussions.)

Both future doctors attended Columbia University’s Medical School or “P&S” (Physicians and Surgeons), as it was known. Many years later, my father told me that he was admitted to that prestigious school because it was wartime (the First World War) and there was a scarcity of young men applying to medical school. Otherwise, as a Jew, he would not have been admitted—no matter the outstanding scholastic record that he had. (Eddie, being three years older, would have applied to P&S before World War I began. How did he get accepted there?)

Edward and Benjamin both did postgraduate training in Europe—though I do not know if their paths crossed during any of the years of their European medical education. (Barsky’s was in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris, while my father’s was in Vienna, Paris, and Dublin.) I know that my father worked his way up the ranks of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, becoming assistant chief of the OB-GYN service. Eventually, both doctors saw their private patients at Beth Israel Hospital in downtown Manhattan. Many years later, my father told me that the women members of the medical staff at BI Hospital all saw him for their OB or GYN care—despite which he always remained a “visiting staff” member. He assumed this was a demonstration of the administration’s attitude towards his leftwing politics.

Edward’s brother, Arthur Barsky, was a famous plastic surgeon who operated on the Hiroshima maidens. Although he apparently wasn’t as politically involved as his brother, his awareness of the horror that American nuclear bombs had caused in Japan moved him to devote his skill as a surgeon to help some of the victims.

Drs. Eddie Barsky and Ben Segal both contributed to and helped to raise funds for the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, or the “Joint” for short. Edward went to jail as a result of his well-known refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee and then had his license to practice surgery revoked for six months. (See the December 2024 issue of The Volunteer for details concerning Dr. Barsky’s life just before, during, and after his time in jail.)

I don’t know to what extent Dr. Barsky was involved in the creation and on-going activities of Physicians Forum, an organization created by doctors to counter some of the activities of the American Medical Association (AMA). During the years that Roosevelt established the New Deal, the AMA fought against the creation of a government entity that would provide universal healthcare in America. “You can’t win them all,” said Franklin to Eleanor. Some of the details of who did what in the early days of Physicians Forum are contained in my father’s papers, which I donated to the Tamiment Archives of the NYU Library. (The finding aid can be consulted here: findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/tam_681.)

Truth be told, my parents didn’t talk much about those years. My mother, Cheri Appel, who was also a pioneer physician, had gone to the Soviet Union around 1934 with Margaret Sanger to teach birth control methods. She returned a socialist, but anti-communist, based on what she’d seen there.

Mimi S. Daitz

New York City