In 1890 the Frankfurt-based Central Committee for the Construction of a Jewish Hospital in Jerusalem sent Dr. Moshe Wallach, a German-Jewish doctor, to Palestine to open a Jewish hospital. In 1902 he opened Shaare Zedek Hospital on Jaffa Road, the first Jewish hospital in the New City. Wallach began with two trained European nurses, Schwester Stybel and Schwester Van Gelder, but one quit due to the "primitive conditions" that existed at Shaare Zedek in those years and the other fled to Germany during World War I. In dire need of a head nurse, Wallach returned to Europe in 1916, during World War I. He was impressed with the similar organizational structure of the Salomon Heine Hospital in Hamburg, and asked the head nurse there if she could spare one of her staff. The 32-year-old Selma Mayer was recommended, and agreed to a three-year contract to fulfill her war service in Palestine.