Private practice and royal appointment After returning home, Blatt opened a private practice in
Târgu Mureș. In 1930 he married Marta Scheiner (1904–1972), a photographer and journalist, originally from
Timișoara. In Tirgu Mures, Blatt performed a successful emergency
retinal detachment surgery on a member of the Greek Royal family, a close relative of Queen Helen of Romania. As a result, in 1931 he was invited to move to Bucharest to serve as official ophthalmologist to the Romanian royal court.
World War II After Romania
joined the Axis powers in 1940, the German army confiscated Blatt's medical office to house German officers and their families. He moved his practice into a three-room apartment, and he, his wife and daughter lived in one room until the end of the war. Secretly Blatt worked with Queen Helen, helping her rescue Jewish families from concentration camps in the regions of
Transylvania,
Moldavia and
Basarabia. He often informed the Queen about goings on that were unknown to her, and acted as liaison between the Queen and the Chief Rabbi of Romania,
Alexandru Șafran, as well as the position of Professor and Chief of the Ophthalmology Department at the "Institute for Specialization and Perfecting of Physicians" in Bucharest. He continued to be the official ophthalmologist of the Romanian royal court, and retained his private practice in Bucharest. He commuted weekly by train between Timișoara and Bucharest. In 1947 King Michael was forced to abdicate by the
Petru Groza government. The royal family requested that the Blatt family be permitted to emigrate as part of their entourage, but the government refused, saying that the country needed Blatt's skills. He was permitted to retain his university positions, but the
People's Republic closed all private medical practices and confiscated all medical equipment. Physicians were allowed to see patients only in government policlinics.
Revista de Oftalmologie In 1948 Blatt founded the first Romanian journal of ophthalmology,
Revista de Oftalmologie, with the participation of many international ophthalmologists, including Filatov of Russia, Baillart and Jeandelize of France, Bietti of Italy, Busacca of Brazil, Cosmetatos of Greece, Franceschetti of Switzerland, Igersheimer and R. Gifford of the US, Pascheff of Bulgaria, Duke-Elder of the UK, and Weve from the Netherlands. The editorial secretaries were the Romanians Virgil Popovici, Nicolae Zolog and Ion Moisescu. The government suppressed the journal after the first issue and declared in the
Revista Stiintelor Medicale that Blatt was a traitor to his country, an agent of
Wall Street and an individual who "does not deserve to teach the new generations of upcoming Romanian physicians who must be devoted to the Soviet science, the only acceptable and real science, in the world". After that Blatt was asked, and declined, to deliver a public statement of
mea culpa stating that he was guilty of all the accusations. From then on Blatt and his family were subject to
Securitate surveillance. In 1954 Blatt was removed from all his teaching responsibilities and was forbidden to see patients or to perform surgeries at the University Hospitals. He obtained the lesser position of Director of the Clinic of Ophthalmology in the Policlinica Cantacuzino. In September 1958 he was invited to act as President of the 18th
International Congress of Ophthalmology in Brussels, Belgium. The government refused to issue him a passport.
Request to leave Romania and imprisonment At the end of 1958 Blatt and his family requested permission to leave Romania. Consequently, he and his wife Marta were imprisoned, and they were threatened and tortured to force them to confess their "criminal relations with the imperialist Occident". Among the crimes he was accused of were having relations with the royal court of Romania, being an agent of Wall Street and having opened bank accounts in Western Europe and in the US in the early 1930s. Blatt was forced to write to the banks asking that the money be returned, whereupon it was confiscated. After contributions from Blatt ceased, the international ophthalmology societies of Western Europe began making inquiries. Eventually the Blatt family was released from jail, though Blatt was refused work by most medical institutions; he was hired as a practicing ophthalmologist by a small policlinic on the outskirts of Bucharest. A group of European and American ophthalmologists headed by Professor Francesco Bietti of Italy then met at an international congress to discuss how to obtain the release of Blatt and his family from Romania. Ultimately his wife's sister in
Toronto, Canada, paid the Romanian Government for their release, which happened in 1964.
Life in exile and death The French Government granted the Blatt family a visa for an unlimited period, and they moved to Paris in August 1964. In October 1964, he was appointed Guest Professor of Ophthalmology, and given a research laboratory, at the
Goethe University Frankfurt in West Germany. Marta Blatt continued living in Frankfurt. She died seven years later, aged 67. ==Editorial committees==