Eugeniusz Łazowski
World War II
Before the onset of World War II Eugeniusz Łazowski obtained a medical degree at the Józef Piłsudski University in Warsaw, Poland. During World War II Łazowski served as a Polish Army Second Lieutenant on a Red Cross train, then as a military doctor of the Polish resistance Home Army. Following the German occupation of Poland Łazowski resided in Rozwadów with his wife and young daughter. Łazowski spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp prior to his arrival in the town, where he reunited with his family and began practicing medicine with his medical-school friend Dr Stanisław Matulewicz. Using a medical discovery by Matulewicz, that healthy people could be injected with a strain of Proteus that would make them test positive for typhus without experiencing the disease, Łazowski created a fake outbreak of epidemic typhus in and around the town of Rozwadów (now a district of Stalowa Wola), which the Germans then quarantined. This saved an estimated 8,000 people from being sent to German concentration camps during the Holocaust.
Later life
In 1958, Lazowski emigrated to the United States on a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation and in 1976 became professor of pediatrics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He wrote a memoir entitled Prywatna wojna (My Private War) which was reprinted several times, as well as over a hundred scientific dissertations.
Lazowski retired from practice in the late 1980s. He died in 2006 in Eugene, Oregon, where he had been living with his daughter.
In popular culture
In 2001, Ryan Bank began work on documentary about Lazowski entitled A Private War, filming Lazowski's visit to Poland and recorded testimonies of people whose families were saved by the fake epidemic. There is no evidence that the film was ever completed or released.
References
- ^ "Chicago's 'Schindler' who saved 8,000 Poles from Nazis dies Chicago Sun-Times - Find Articles". findarticles.com. Archived from the original on 30 October 2007. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
- ^ Andrzej Pityński, "Short biography of Eugeniusz Łazowski". Archived from the original on November 11, 2007. Retrieved 2009-04-03.. Museum of Stalowa Wola, 2007. (in Polish) Retrieved August 3, 2012.
- ^ Art Golab, "Chicago's 'Schindler' who saved 8,000 Jews from the Holocaust". Archived from the original on October 30, 2007. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) Chicago Sun-Times, Dec 20, 2006. - ^ Paula Davenport, Media & Communication Resources, "Life Preserver". Archived from the original on July 20, 2011. Retrieved 2012-05-30.
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External links
- He duped Nazis, saved thousands. Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine Source: The Sun-Times Company
- Fake Epidemic Saves a Village from Nazis at the Wayback Machine (archived January 22, 2009). Holocaustforgotten.com
- 2 doctors used typhus to save thousands in wartime
- Paula Davenport, Media & Communication Resources, Southern Illinois University, Life Preserver