Elegy for Dr. Kotni
(December 29, 1942)
Indian friend Dr. Kotni1 came to China from afar to help resist Japan. After
working in Yan’an and North China for over five years and giving medical care
to the wounded, he died of illness as result of overwork. The whole army lost an
arm, and the whole people lost a friend. We shall never forget Dr. Kotni’s
internationalist spirit.
Notes
Our source for this text is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 10, p. 180.
1. Dr. D. S. Kotni (1911–December 9, 1942), known in Chinese as Ke Dihua, was an Indian medical doctor
who went to the Chinese Communist Party–controlled areas of China in 1938, working in the hospitals of
the Eighth Route Army, especially in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region as director of the Norman
Bethune International Peace Hospital.