by Ramona Tirado
Mount Sinai Archives intern, Fall 2014
The Mount Sinai Archives is proud to announce that the records of the U.S. Army 3rd General Hospital, Mount Sinai’s overseas unit during World War II, have been scanned and are now available to the public. This is the first Mount Sinai historical collection to be fully digitized and made freely accessible.
Establishing and maintaining a military hospital was a major undertaking that greatly taxed Mount Sinai’s financial and human resources. In total, Mount Sinai’s contribution to the war included 421 doctors, 216 nurses, 158 employees and 7 trustees, many of whom served as part of the 3rd General Hospital unit. The unit was established in August 1942 and trained at Camp Rucker in Alabama. They were sent overseas in May 1943, spending a year in Tunisia before following the Allied offensive into Italy and France. The unit was formally deactivated in September 1945.
The documents included in the 3rd General Hospital Collection span approximately 20 inches. The collection includes an unpublished unit history written by Dr. Ralph Moloshok, who meticulously detailed his experiences in the war from the arrival of the August 22, 1942 telegram announcing deployment orders to the unit’s official deactivation on September 16, 1945. The manuscript includes details of the officers’ training schedules, education, recreation, and travel. Photographs of their time in basic training at Camp Rucker, as well as their travels to North Africa, are affixed within its pages, and the manuscript also contains hand drawn illustrations by an unidentified artist. Also of note are two scrapbooks from the Department of Nursing and the Nursing Alumnae Association. These scrapbooks contain memorabilia and official documents associated with the Mount Sinai members of the Army Nurse Corps’ participation in World War II. They cover the time period from 1942 through 1945. The collection also contains a complete run of Grand Rounds: Memos from Mount Sinai Men to their Fellows in the Services, a newsletter that collected the correspondence of Mount Sinai’s overseas units for readers on the home front and abroad. Finally, of special note are the digital copies of 8mm films that were created by Dr. Henry Horn, a member of the Unit. These are available for viewing on-site at the Archives.
A finding aid for the collection is available here. Scanned items can be viewed in the Mount Sinai Digital Repository.
