About: Schwester Selma

Selma Mayer (3 February 1884 – 5 February 1984) known as Schwester Selma (German: Sister Selma or Nurse Selma) was an Israeli nurse who was the head nurse at the original Shaare Zedek Hospital on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem for nearly 50 years. For many years she was the right-hand assistant of the hospital's founding director, Dr. Moshe Wallach. Working long hours and with limited infrastructure, she trained and supervised all personnel at the hospital from 1916 to the 1930s, and founded the Shaare Zedek School of Nursing in 1934. She never married, and resided in a room in the hospital until her last day. In her later years she became known as the "Jewish Florence Nightingale" for her decades of selfless devotion to patient welfare.