The Community Embassy Pharmacy

He witnesses the whole story, from the building of the perimeter walls to the division of the ghetto, the separation of families, harassment, brutal murders, the everyday life of 60,000 people crammed into 320 buildings, 3,167 rooms (4 families were given one apartment and many were forced to live on the streets) at the mercy of a pain stricken and uncertain future that would end up in suppression.

I know it is a sad, terrible and painful theme but at the heart of all that suffering one man decided to stay. He decided to help and observe. In the words of Tadeusz: 

“the pharmacy was in the opinion of most of the people, a sort of embassy, a diplomatic station, representing the world, singularly free, within the walled and imprisoned city”

It makes you realise that the pharmacy became a sort of oasis, a free isle people could retreat to and hide their religious items (in a secret vault people hid Torahs and other religious artefacts). It was a place where people could talk and exchange messages of resistance and that it was precisely a pharmacist, that important figure, the one who took charge of the neighborhood, silent saviour of the community in spite of everything.

Lots of different people went in and out of the pharmacy left to chance whether they lived or died, people who helped the jews, others who betrayed them, people who escaped and others who were deported and killed. A whole town and a small pharmacy, a pharmacist and three staff members who worked to alleviate people’s pain, not only with medicines that were often hard to find but by listening to people and saving lives. 

Isn’t that what today’s pharmacists who love their job do? The answer is yes, when it comes to independent pharmacies, or those in rural areas where apart from low prices and 3 for 2 deals it’s really the people that count. They are pillars of the community, of the small towns, those who work nights, who go to people’s houses, those who are still real pharmacists. 

This makes me think of another pharmacist, Mr. Walgreen (the creator of the American chain), who during the Depression from 1929-1940 during the darkest years helped his community by cancelling out all their debts and giving them their medicine for free. During those years his wife cooked with ingredients they traded in exchange for medicine: chicken, eggs, meat and in his pharmacy they served meals for 25 cents. 

“That store was the meeting place for the whole town”

(John U. Bacon, “America’s corner store” – John Wiley & Sons, Inc 2004); we’re talking about Chicago, we’re talking about a pharmacy.