The Current

ENCORE: Inge Rapoport earns doctorate at age 102, after Nazis denied degree

The Nazis withheld her degree 77 years ago, but Dr. Inge Rapoport finally obtained it, becoming the oldest person in Europe ever to be granted a medical degree.
Retired German neonatologist Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport, aged 102, poses with her doctoral certificate at the UKE hospital in Hamburg, June 9, 2015. From 1937 until 1938 Syllm-Rapoport studied medicine in Hamburg, but the admission to her oral exam was denied by the Nazi authorities due to her Jewish origin. Some 77 years later Syllm-Rapoport took her oral exam and passed it successfully on May 20, 2015. (REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer)

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Ingeborg Syllm, later Rapoport, shortly after she left Nazi Germany for the U.S. in 1938. (Dr. Susan Richter)
There's lifelong education, and then there's the story of Dr. Ingeborg Rapoport.

This year, she's 103 years old, but last summer, the German physician made history. At the age of 102, she became the oldest person in Europe ever to be granted a medical degree. It came 77 years after the Nazis denied it to her. 

"They Googled for me," says Rapoport, describing study methods for her medical degree.

It's a remarkable story, her atonement of sorts, so many years in the making.

And it holds a special significance for Jerusalem-based journalist Irris Makler, as she explains in her documentary, The 102 year old woman who crammed for her doctorate.


 
​The Current's documentary editor is Joan Webber. 

Our colleagues at As It Happens spoke to Rapoport about the difficulties of studying in Nazi Germany and why the University of Hamburg medical school helped her finish her degree.

Here is that conversation with host Carol Off:

Ingeborg Rapoport was prevented from taking oral exam to finish studies in 1938

Listen to the full conversation at the top of this post.