Hadassah

  • Issue: October 1975
  • Designer: E. Greenman
  • Stamp size: 51.4 x 20 mm
  • Plate no.: 461
  • Sheet of 15 stamps Tabs: 5
  • Printers: Government Printers
  • Method of printing: Photogravure

When the Hebrew University was opened in Jerusalem in 1925, Hadassah Medical Organization had been serving the local population for many years. It was, therefore, only natural that the University should go into partnership with Hadassah to create a large hospital on Mount Scopus, which should serve as the basis for undergraduate and postgraduate medical training.

This hospital, designed by the famous German-Jewish architect, Erich Mendelssohn, was opened in 1939 and immediately became an important centre of healing for the entire Middle East, A month before Israel's independence (1948), Dr. Chaim Yassky, HMOs director-general and 76 to-workers from Hadassah and the Hebrew University were ambushed and murdered by Arabs while in convoy on their way to their humanitarian duties on Mt. Scopus- Under siege conditions, the Hadassah staff held out on Mt. Scopus until June 27th, when they were evacuated with patients and nursing students, and equipment for 300 beds, in a single swift operation to the centre of Jerusalem.

The Hadassah buildings on Mt. Scopus lay neglected and unused for 19 years until the reunification of Jerusalem in the Six Day War (1967) and the restoration of free access to the Mount. When the Hadassah flag was rehoisted on the historic buildings, Hadassah's director-general, Prof. K. J. Mann, declared: "This is a flag of war against ignorance and disease. It is a flag of peace, and as we raise it, we vow to rehabilitate the hospital".

The reconstruction and enlargement of the Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus are now in full progress. Within the framework of the buildings created by Mendelssohn forty years ago, a hospital is taking shape, designed to meet the medical needs of the 1980's and to reflect the latest concepts in hospital planning and practice.

It will cover a total built-up area of 378,000 square feet, of which approximately two-thirds will consist of new buildings designed in harmony with the existing structures. These additions will include clinical and research laboratories, pharmacy, central sterile supply, underground emergency areas, pathology, electromechanical installations and a closed circuit teaching TV studio and control room.

The new Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus will have 271 beds and 36 cots for newborns and will contain the following departments:

The hospital will also be provided with six modern operating theatres, a library, a teaching auditorium, and a synagogue. The reopening of Hadassah on Mount Scopus will be a landmark in the history of modern Jerusalem.

It will enable Hadassah Medical Organization, in partnership with the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, to expand considerably the under-graduate and post-graduate medical training programmes. More medical students will be able to graduate in Jerusalem and more facilities will be available for doctors to take their residency training in the medical and surgical specialities or refresher courses in fields of special interest to them.

Moreover, it will provide Jerusalem with urgently-needed beds for patient care and thus be a tremendous boon to the tens of thousands of Jewish families in the new housing projects in East and North Jerusalem as well as to the Arab residents in the Old City and outside its walls.

The return of Hadassah to Mount Scopus will further strengthen the ties which bind American Jewry, through the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization, with the State of Israel and the well-being of all who dwell therein.

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"Hadassah" returns to Mt. Scopus