An increased demand for nurses during World War II, and the establishment of the Cadet-Nursing Corps in 1943, contributed to public recognition of nursing as a profession and an expansion of nurses’ duties. The prestigious and rigorous Jewish nursing schools photographed by Vishniac during the late 1940s and early 1950s reflect the increased responsibility accorded to the profession in the postwar period—making it an attractive profession for many female Holocaust survivors and refugees, recent immigrants working to establish new lives in New York. Vishniac documented the monumental changes to the profession at institutions like the Jewish Hospital School of Nursing in Brooklyn and Beth Israel Hospital’s Jewish nursing school in Manhattan.

For all uses of photographs by Roman Vishniac contact ICP at: vishniac_archive@icp.org.