Amelia Greenwald

Born in Gainesville, Alabama, Amelia Greenwald served as the Home’s first trained nurse. Following her studies at Touro Infirmary School of Nursing, Superintendent Chester Teller hired Greenwald shortly after his arrival in 1909. She tended to the medical needs of the Home’s 142 children, treating their daily scrapes and discomforts while calling, as needed, upon a greatly expanded team of consulting physicians and dentists. Greenwald remained at the Home about two years. She would go on to become a pioneer in the field of public health.

With psychiatric training she received at Johns Hopkins Phipps Clinic, Greenwald served in World War I with the new “shell shock unit” in France, attaining the position of acting chief nurse in Verdun. After the war, with a commission from President Herbert Hoover, Greenwald organized the first school of nursing in Warsaw, Poland. For her accomplishments, she became the first woman to receive that country’s highest honor, the “Golden Cross of Merit.” 

Among other nursing pursuits, in 1933, Greenwald traveled to Palestine where she participated in performing a comprehensive survey of the nursing system there. After returning to the United States, she was active in public health work in Florida and New York before settling in Eunice, Louisiana where she ran a dress shop until her final illness.

Amelia Greenwald died in 1966 and was buried in Meridian, Mississippi’s Beth Israel Cemetery. 

Additional information about Amelia Greenwald: Jewish Women’s Archive; Susan Mayer, “Amelia Greenwald and Regina Kaplan: Jewish Nursing Pioneers,” Southern Jewish History;  FamilySearch.org; Find A Grave.