Moments of history photographed in black and white - turned into color with the help of artificial intelligence / the Rambam medical reading
Since its establishment, the Rambam Medical Center has been at the center of wars, security situations, military operations and traumatic events. The hospital, founded by the British 85 years ago, in the shadow of World War II, was an integral part of Israel's systems and the country's history, many chapters of which were written in blood.
Then, and even today, the soldiers and civilians were treated at the hospital in a complex reality that was expressed in many ways, including in the hospital's corridors.
In a special project, the Rambam Medical College Archive reveals historical photos, in black and white, that represent Israel's wars, events that shaped history ours and public medicine, and paints them, with the help of artificial intelligence, with color and hope for a better future.
The evacuees from Kibbutz Gesher lived in the hospital for two years until they could return to their homes during the War of Independence, 1948/Rambam Medical College
The hospital was established to treat the British wounded in World War 2
At the end of the 1930s, the British, who rule the country, begin to prepare for the spillover of the war in Europe to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Haifa, which was then an important strategic point for the British army, houses a port, military bases and a large military community.
This is how the decision was born to build a large and modern hospital on the shores of Haifa, one that would be able to respond to the local residents, but also to receive the soldiers of His Majesty's army and the members of the British government located in the eastern Mediterranean.
In December 1938, the same building was inaugurated, called by the High Commissioner "the most beautiful hospital in the Middle East", and later became the Rambam Medical College. In its early
days, the hospital housed medical teams, and patients made up of a human mosaic of government officials and the local Arab, Druze, and Jewish population, many who are those who escaped from Nazi Europe. In the archive stories of those years, stand out the descriptions of the treatment of the victims of an explosion that happened on the British ship "Patria" by the fighters of the "Haganah", in order to try to prevent it from expelling three ships of immigrants from the shores of Israel. The result was hundreds of drowned and injured - an event The first RN of the British government hospital.
The use of the hospital facilities for the purpose of hiding "Haganah" fighters and those who qualify from the British law, under the guise of patients and patients is described in historical documents, some of them escaped death, others were captured and deported.
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Wounded IDF soldiers hospitalized in the orthopedic department. Six Day War, 1967/Rambam Medical College
When the hospital becomes a home for two years for the evacuees from the north
With the end of the British mandate and the outbreak of the War of Liberation, Rambam found himself at the center of events. The war raised the need to utilize the state-of-the-art and advanced building that had been inaugurated only nine years earlier, and in June 1948 the senior doctors of those days addressed a letter to the Minister of Immigration and Health and to the director of the committee's health department National, and suggest that Rambam become the central hospital for the northern region - in order to optimize the use of existing medical resources.
In the area of human capital, in these years many doctors from Europe come to Rambam, most of whom have gained experience in military medicine. The first cycles of nursing studies at the nursing school combine, out of necessity, practical training in treating the war wounded who arrive at the hospital
. Over the years, a surreal reality has existed, when alongside the hospital's function as a medical institution, it also serves as a shelter for children and their mothers from Kibbutz Gesher who were evacuated, or actually fled the dangers of the enemy who attacked in the north (sound familiar?).
The community lived in Rambam for about two years until they returned to their homes.
During that time, new babies were born in Rambam, a real "baby boom", when in August 1949 Rambam celebrates the birth of the thousandth baby within eight months of the opening of the maternity department. Some of the newborns belong to Kibbutz Gesher , the great majority, to families who escaped the Nazi oppressor and symbolized the revival that came after the Holocaust.
Aerial evacuation from the attack on the children's bus in Avivim, 1970/Rambam Medical College
The medical innovations that gave rise to the battles
The years pass and Rambam grows, grows and develops. With the momentum, the hospital's doctors also manage to record medical, research and therapeutic achievements, some of which are considered breakthroughs. Thus, in 1965, the first kidney transplant in Israel from the dead was performed, by Prof. David Erlik, One of the first surgeons in Israel who managed the surgical department at the hospital, after which 22 more transplants were performed within two years.
The first liver transplants in Israel were also performed at Rambam.
During the Six Day War, the hospital received for the first time a large number of soldiers injured in battles and since then, in times of emergency, it became a military hospital. During the
Yom Kippur War, it received thousands of wounded from the Syrian front. During the war, he developed a rehabilitation method for burn victims, using a diet that included, among other things, 35 eggs a day.
From evidence preserved in the Rambam archives, Prof. Erlik describes the large number of wounded who arrived at the Rambam with many limb injuries and injuries to the blood vessels of the limbs , that is, in danger of losing an arm or a leg. Rambam surgeons had great experience in fusing arteries, a necessary condition for saving these organs, but when they operated on the veins, they encountered the problem of blood clotting, especially in the central vein, after the operation - which sometimes caused necrosis and the need to amputate the limb, despite The great effort invested in her rescue.
Dr. Alfred Shermak, one of the fathers of surgery in Israel, who operated on Rambam at that time, came up with an idea and connected a small artery that injected arterial blood into the operated area, and removed it after it was clear that the leg was safe from necrosis and amputation.
Thus, the resourcefulness that was born out of the hardship, became a medical solution that helped patients in Israel and around the world.
The commander of the SDL, Antoine Lahad, visits the war wounded in Rambam.
The First Lebanon War/Rambam Medical College
The largest underground hospital in the world
The needs of the northern population in times of peace and war dictated in many ways the expansion of infrastructure and construction at Rambam. The medical center, which began as part of a Carmelite monastery, became 85 years later a large-scale medical campus that combines medical treatment, research and development.
Rambam being a center for trauma of the northern region, already from the first years of its activity outlined both the treatment approach, both the world view of the working teams and the physical development of the medical center.
This is how Rambam's airfield was trained to receive the wounded in a rocket-like manner, this is how a close relationship was formed with the American Sixth Fleet, which was anchored in the nearby port at various times, and this is how the decision was born to establish the largest protected underground hospital of its kind in the world, a structure born as a lesson from the 2nd Lebanon War, and is intended to serve the entire population of the north in an emergency.
The underground hospital has an infrastructure for 2,000 beds and treatment stations sorted into the departments accepted in any hospital, operating rooms, a dialysis unit with more than 90 treatment beds, delivery rooms, departments for ambulatory care and imaging units.
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