This biography was written for the book Against the Odds: New Zealand’s First Women Doctors published in 2025. Further information can be found in the bibliography. It was compiled by Michaela Selway.
Contents
1953 graduate
Dr. Selma Hahn (née Roniger), also known as Zelma, was born on May 3, 1909, in Jablonec nad Nisou, Czechoslovakia to Alexander and Marie Roniger. She had at least two siblings: a sister, Friederike Bedriska Wise, and a brother, Bruno Benjamin Roniger. Bruno died on 26 July 1929 at the young age of 18. (1)
Selma received her degree from the Faculty of Medicine of the German University in Prague in 1935 and then worked for three years in medical and surgical hospitals. (2) On December 27, 1938, Selma married Erich Hahn, a Czech citizen born on August 31, 1909, in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. (3)
As the situation worsened for Jews in Europe, Selma had her medical license revoked. In 1941, the Hahn’s were captured and sent first to Jewish ghettos and then concentration camps. The records state that Selma was first sent to Łódź and Minsk in 1941, then Ujazdów in 1942, and finally Terezín, where she remained until liberation in 1945. During the war years, Ronigar-Hahn ‘doctored, if it can be called that, in concentration camps’. (4) The records show that Erich Hahn was sent to Terezín on 13 July 1943 and then transferred to Auschwitz on 15 December 1943. He died in July 1944. (2) Selma’s mother, Marie, died in the Treblinka Extermination Camp in 1942. Selma’s sister, Friederike, survived the war. She moved to London and married Leslie Albert Wise. She died on in 1989 at the age of 86. (1)
After the war, Ronigar-Hahn offered her services to the British Army in the British occupation zone of Germany, and this eventually led her to New Zealand late in 1949. Selma boarded the SS. Napoli on 11 July 1949 in Genoa, bound for Wellington, New Zealand. Her name was listed as Zelma Hahn, a widow, who worked as a nurse and physician.
Since Selma had already completed a medical degree overseas, she was admitted to the Otago Medical School on a new three-year “special” program designed to retrain international doctors within the British system. According to historian Ann Gluckman, Ronigar-Hahn had ‘great difficulty in coping when she had to requalify in anaesthesia in Otago’ because of the trauma of working as a doctor in the concentration camps.
“It was a struggle for survival. Any form of rejection or criticism, deliberate or implied, by staff or students revived memories of the fears, punishments and dangers associated with disapproval by the non-Jew in the camps. Her survival techniques made her unpopular with those students who lacked understanding. Once she was her own master, when she was no longer in what, to her, was still a hostile and threatening environment, she was much happier.” (4)
After completing her studies, Selma settled in Blockhouse Bay, Auckland, and opened a general practice. She led a quiet life in Auckland, and remarried in 1958. She involved herself in the growing Jewish community and participated in a historical study conducted by Ann Gluckman on the Auckland Jewry, which was published in 1990. She died in 1988.
References:
- Dr. Selma Hahn (Roniger) (1909 – d.). Accessed 11 May 2025: https://www.geni.com/people/Dr-Selma-Hahn/6000000172626198483?
- ‘Erich Hahn’. Accessed 11 May 2025: https://www.holocaust.cz/databaze-obeti/obet/91804-erich-hahn/
- ‘Selma Hahn(ova)’. Accessed 11 May 2025: https://remember.org/hahn.htm
- Gluckman, Ann. Identity and Involvement: Auckland Jewry, Past and Present. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1990.
