Chasing The Cure

Dr. Philip Hillkowitz was born in Lithuania in 1873 and died in Denver in 1948. He was president of Jewish Consumptives’ Relief Society from its beginning in 1904 until his death in 1948. His father Rabbi Elias Hillkowitz, who suffered from asthma, brought the family to Denver in 1890. Rabbi Hillkowitz suggested the JCRS motto from the Talmud: ''He who saves one life is considered as if had preserved the whole world.'' His daughter, Anna Hillkowitz Bresler, took leave from her job as a Denver librarian to work as a field secretary for the JCRS. She traveled around the United States raising money for the Sanatorium beginning in 1906.

Dr. Hillkowitz was determined to make the JCRS a comfortable environment for indigent Jewish immigrant consumptives and often affirmed his goal of not allowing the JCRS to become “a cold, complexionless institution, which just happens to be inhabited by Hebrews.” In addition to kosher ethnic food, the JCRS held regular celebrations of the Jewish Sabbath and holidays as well as making it a haven for Jews who held radical socialist political views. Ben and Bessie Glass were patients at the JCRS and talk about life “at the San” in an oral history.