Obituaries

Josephine Stross, the youngest of three children, was born in Vienna on June 1 1900 into a cultured, liberal home. Her father was a leading lawyer in the city, the only Jew to become president of Vienna's Law Society.

Her close friend from early childhood was Marianna - later to become, as Marianne Kris, an outstanding and influential psychoanalyst in New York. Marianne's father, Oscar Rie, was a paediatrician and close friend of Sigmund Freud. The two girls went to school together where, Dr Stross recalled, ‘I did her French for her, Marianna did my maths.’ Growing up, Josephine Stross became part of the circle of friends and associates of Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and the two central interests in her life - paediatric medicine and psychoanalysis - were fashioned early.

When in February 1937 Anna Freud opened her creche for the children of some of the poorest families in Vienna (the Jackson Nursery) she appointed Dr Stross medical officer and their collaboration continued until Anna Freud's death.

In June 1938, when the Freud family managed to leave Vienna, Dr Max Schur, Freud's physician, was ill and unable to travel with them, and it fell to Josefine Stross to accompany them and attend to the professor's medical needs. Sadly, Dr Stross's mother and older sister were unable to leave Vienna and perished in a death camp.

After taking the necessary re-qualifying exams that enabled her to practise medicine in the UK, Josefine Stross joined Anna Freud in her pioneer work, initially in a shelter for the children of families who had been bombed out of their homes. This quickly grew to occupy three buildings that came to be known as the Hampstead War Nurseries, and Dr Stross undertook all the necessary medical treatment of the children. She was also involved in the care of the children who were brought to this country from the concentration camps. Following the success of Anna Freud's training course in child psychotherapy, started in 1946, Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingh