Rudolf Bock

Born:	04-20-1915
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled student

Rudolf BOCK, born on April 20th, 1915 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Wiener Neustadt/Lower Austria, Citizenship: Austria), son of F. v. Bock (senior official 'Regierungsrat', rector of a business school in Wiener Neustadt, retired since 1935) and his wife (nee Patek, married in 1909), lived in Wiener Neustadt together with his parents, his older brother Kurt (born in 1910) and his younger sister Lislott since 1920. After he had graduated from high school, he began to study medicine at the University of Vienna in fall term 1933/34:
"I started medical school in 1933, the same year that Hitler came to power in Germany. For the first year, in order to save money, I commuted to Vienna by train and street car, which took about 1 3/4 hours each way and this allowed a lot of time for studying on the train. […] I did enjoy the 8:00 a.m. anatomy lecture in the huge amphitheater of the Anatomical Institute on Waehringerstrasse. I never had much trouble with this subject since I was blessed with a very good visual memory and learned most of it by simply looking at pictures in the Atlas. Of course, we had also a great deal of dissecting to do, at least two hours daily. I still remember the feeling of disgust I had when we novices were standing in line to receive our first specimen for dissection. The rickety elevator came up from the basement and the orderly, a huge orangutan-faced man opened the door. He started distributing the pieces: a wrist with a hand, an elbow, a shoulder, an ankle - and so on, slopping the heavily carbolic acid smelling specimen into our hands with the smile of a sadist. It was the initiation rite, so to say, but only a few of us felt like throwing up. The moment we sat down at the dissecting table with our Atlas and started to identify the various structures. we began to feel happily intrigued with what we were doing.
In chemistry we also had lab besides the daily lecture, but biology (zoology) and physics were only lectures and rather boring with about 500-600 students trying to sit still and listen when we preferred to be out in the sun. I took the optional semester end exams (Colloquia) in the various subjects because this was an incentive to keep up with the material (there were no little weekly quizzes to help one, like here). This also entitled one to significantly reduced tuition fees for the next semester if one passed them satisfactorily. " (BOCK 2002, 25f.)
He lived in student's dorm in Vienna 8th district, Pfeilgasse 4, from the second year of studies on. Although both parents had converted to Roman Catholicism before he was born, he was regarded as a "Jew" according to National Socialist racial laws.
Rudolf Bock was finally enrolled in spring term 1938 at the Medical School in the 5th year of his studies and received a grant from the Ministry of Education ('Absolutorium' was certified on December 2nd, 1938, in the spring term 1938 he could continue his studies in the context of the Numerus clausus of Jewish Students until the end of the term):
"I was also soon informed by the university authorities to do the same in order to be allowed to continue my medical education. I was then in my last semester and I could not imagine that they could throw me out at this point.[…] My classmate Wenger […] had heard that the new authorities of the medical school had requested all non-Aryan students in their last semester (which was my case) to make an application to be allowed to continue and finish their medical education. It was hinted that 2%o out of this group might be permitted to do so. I wrote up this application and went to Vienna to hand it in." (BOCK 2002, 30f.)
"Toward the end of April, I was notified that I would be allowed to finish my medical education in Vienna "until further notice." I had hoped for this, but still had prepared myself for rejection. Why was I chosen as being among the 20%? Because I was Catholic? I'll never know. I went back to the university, studying like a fool to be ready for the final exams that started with Pathology and Pharmacology at the end of June." (BOCK 2002, 35)
He passed the first final exams ('Rigorosen') by the end of June and was preparing for the exams in internal medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry, neurology, surgery, and gynecology and obstetrics, which he passed between late September and November. On November 18th, 1938 he was informed by the Office of the Dean of the Medical Faculty, that he was not allowed to take further exams "until further notice". He was not able to complete the four last missing Rigorosen in dermatology, ophthalmology, hygiene and forensic medicine. After his brother Kurt was already emigrated in early September to Zagreb/Yugoslavia to wait for a visa for the USA, Rudolf Bock decided now to follow him. On December 4th, 1938, he traveled by plane to Belgrade and from there by train to Zagreb. Although baptized Catholic, Rudolf and Kurt Bock found support by Jewish charities on their escape. Her uncle Paul organized working documents for them, that allowed them to enter Japan. On January 4th, 1939, they boarded the ship Conte Rosso in Trieste and emigrated to Shanghai/China. To complete his medical studies, he applied to the well-equipped Peiping Union Medical College (PUMC), an American Medical School in Beijing run by the Rockefeller Foundation since 1922. After his brother Kurt had described their situation in detail, Rudolf Bock was admitted to the university about one month later. Meanwhile, Kurt and Rudolf Bock had traveled on to Japan, where they met their uncle in Tokyo. Shortly afterwards, her mother arrived in Tokio together with her parents, Leopold and Irma Patek. Sister Lislott had emigrated to England on a Kindertransport. Their father stayed in Vienna due to health reasons and was preparing to emigrate. To continue his medical studies, Rudolf Bock traveled quickly to Beijing by train and lived in the dorm of PUMC (Wenham Hall). Although he had a nearly completed degree, he first had to consist all the exams of the first three (of five) academic years of the American curriculum to catch up, in order to be admitted for the fourth year. He passed all exams in September 1939 – including an oral examination in Chinese – and then officially began his medical studies. He was able to conclude his studies in June 1941 (M.D.). He specialized in ophthalmology and began his residency as an ophthalmologist, but after the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7th, 1941 the Japanese army that occupied Beijing shut down the PUMC and its clinics. To earn money, Rudolf Bock soon found a job as an assistant in the private practice of Dr. Pi, a Chinese ophthalmologist, where he treated about 20 patients daily in the Charity Clinic. In 1942 he met his future wife Trude, whose family had emigrated from the National Socialist persecution in Germany to Geneva/Switzerland. By the end of 1942 his mother, who had been detained in Japan as an alleged spy, joined him in Beijing. His brother had emigrated to the USA in 1941.
He soon gave up his job in the private practice, and started to work at Catholic French Hospital, where he was again responsible for the Charity Clinic, and also treated private patients.
On September 3rd, 1944 he married Trude, who thereby lost her German citizenship, too. Together with her, his mother and his uncle Paul, he lived in a new apartment, where he also set up a treatment room to treat private patients as an ophthalmologist. The grandparents Irma Leopold and Patek were both deceased in Japan. By the end of war in 1945 Rudolf Bock worked at the Methodist Eye Hospital in Beijing.
After the end of World War II, the family learned that his father had died in December 1941 in Vienna. The mother left Beijing in the summer of 1946, and emigrated to Kurt to Berkeley, California/USA. On September 27th, 1946 the first daughter of Rudolf and Trude Bock, Marianne, was born. The young family went to Shanghai in January 1947 in order to travel to Europe with the ship Champolion in February. They arrived on March 4th, 1947 in Marseille/France and traveled to Geneva/Switzerland, where they met Trude's parents. Rudolf Bock got the opportunity to work in Geneva at the University Eye Clinic as an observer, while Trude found a job as a secretary. Since the waiting time for an entry visa to the USA was very long, he returned temporarily to Vienna to compete the missing four 'Rigorosen' of his Viennese study in September 1947, but did not pass the examination in hygiene at the first time. He returned back to Geneva, where his wife and his daughter Marianne had remained, and worked again at the University Eye Clinic.
Trude, who – as a German citizen – received her U.S. visa earlier, traveled to the USA in March 1948 together with their daughter Marianne. They lived with his brother Kurt in Berkeley, California, where their second daughter was born. Because Rudolf Bock after 1.5 years still has not received a visa, they returned again. Meanwhile, he had found a job as an assistant at the County Hospital in Aarau/Switzerland. In spring 1950 he returned again to Vienna, successfully passed the final examination of his interrupted studies and obtained the academic title 'Dr. med.'. He also successfully completed a residency and was licensed as an ophthalmologist in Austria. After he had finally received his visa for the United States, the family traveled via Paris/France to Le Havre, where their ship SS America departed. On March 6th, 1951 they arrived in New York. While Trude together with their daughters traveled on to California, where Kurt lived, Rudolf Bock studied n New York for the Medical State Board examinations, which he took in June 1951. Then he traveled to his family to Berkeley, where he began to work as researcher in corneal transplantation in Stanford on July 1, 1951. On July 7th, 1951 his son Michael was born.
Rudolf Bock eventually settled in California, but again had to complete a one-year internship and the California Board examinations, in order be licensed as an ophthalmologist. In July 1952, he began his residency at Southern Pacific Hospital in San Francisco, where the family moved. In July 1953, he completed all the necessary exams and then opened a private ophthalmologist practice in Palo Alto, California. Rudolf Bock died in 2006 in California/USA.

Lit.: POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 222, 366; Letter from Rudolf Bock from August 30th, 2002 to Herbert Posch; Rudolf BOCK, Gratefully looking back. A doctors special Journey, Riverside 2002; Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (FAAO):  Rudolf H. Bock, MD (b.1915); Austrian Heritage Collection am Leo Baeck Institute New York: Rudolf Bock Collection 2000; KNIEFACZ/POSCH 2017c.

Katharina Kniefacz