Glezer Tevel (Tewel) (b. 1911, Riga – d. 1994, Jerusalem) – leading internist and cardiologist in Jūrmala from 1955 to 1990; survivor of the ghetto and Nazi concentration camps; participant in the Zionist movement during the 1930s.
He attempted to enrol in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Latvia but faced the same fate as many Jewish youths of his time—an insurmountable obstacle in the person of Professor Plakiss, a philologist and one of the leaders of the fascist “Pērkonkrusts” movement, notorious for deliberately failing Jewish and Russian applicants (see: L. Blaua, Stradiņu mantojums, Ieva, 13 June 2007, p. 34). Professor Plakiss took three of the four entrance exams (written and oral Latvian, and Latin) and although Tevel Glezner passed them with scores of “four” (out of five), this was insufficient to secure admission to the medical faculty.
However, such discriminatory barriers did not apply when joining the fifth year to validate a foreign diploma—only the passing of examinations was required. This is why many Jewish doctors of his generation held foreign degrees. Glezer chose Switzerland: he studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zurich (1930–1931) and at the University of Basel (1933–1935). In 1935, he was forced to leave Switzerland on orders from the immigration authorities after being found to have been tutoring—private lessons, like any form of work, were prohibited for foreigners.
He served in the Latvian Army from 1931 to 1933 and again during the 1940 general mobilisation. From 1935 to 1940, he worked as a timber warehouse broker. A committed Zionist, Glezer attended meetings with Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor and was a delegate to the 17th (Basel, 1931) and 19th (Lucerne, 1935) Zionist Congresses. He was also an active member of the Swiss branch of Keren Kayemet.
At the start of WWII, he served as a paramedic at the Republican Hospital. With the Nazi occupation, he lost nearly his entire family—some killed on the streets by Aizsargi, others during mass shootings in Rumbula. One brother died at the front, another perished in Dachau. Only his brother David survived (see: David Glezer).
Tevel was imprisoned in the Riga Ghetto and later interned in Kaiserwald, SS-Bauhof, Stutthof, and Buchenwald (in its Magdeburg subcamp), where his prisoner number was 95866. He was liberated by Allied forces in April 1945. After extended treatment in American and Soviet military hospitals and rigorous Soviet political vetting (he had to persuade them that a tiny part of Jews could survive in Nazi concentration camps without collaborating), he returned to Riga in 1946.
Initially, he taught French and German to Soviet military officers while completing his medical degree at the University of Latvia, which he finished in 1950. He was assigned to work at the railway hospital in Valga, Estonia (1950–1953). In 1953, he was approved for employment at Riga’s 1st Clinical Hospital, but his appointment was annulled due to the infamous Doctors' Plot.
From 1953 to 1990, Glezer worked at the Jūrmala district polyclinic—first as a district doctor, later as head of the therapeutic department, while also specialising in cardiology. In the late 1950s, he studied electrocardiography under Dr. Lempert, a Viennese physician who had fled to Latvia in the 1930s.
Glezer was considered the leading internist and cardiologist in Jūrmala, admired by colleagues across Latvia and beloved by patients from around the USSR. He played a vital role in training younger doctors and actively participated in the Latvian therapeutic and cardiology societies.
In 1991, he repatriated to Israel, where he wrote his memoirs, Memoirs of a Ghetto Prisoner.
Selected Publications:
– Glezer T. Memoirs of a Ghetto Prisoner Military-Historical Archive, 2005: No. 7, pp. 106–124; No. 8, pp. 167–187; No. 11, pp. 158–176.
Literature:
– Бергман А. Записки недочеловека ( Notes of a Subhuman), Riga, 2005, pp. 122–123.