Eugene Łazowski

Eugeniusz Sławomir Łazowski (* 1913 in Częstochowa ; † December 16, 2006 in Eugene (Oregon) ) was a Polish doctor and university professor . Together with Stanisław Matulewicz , he managed a spotted fever sham epidemic around Stalowa Wola during the German occupation in Poland . In this way, Łazowski was able to treat Jews and resistance fighters unmolested .

Life

Łazowski grew up in Warsaw and began medical training. When the German Reich invaded Poland in 1939 , he was quickly appointed military doctor by the Polish army. After being captured by German soldiers, he escaped and fled to his fiancee, who lived near Stalowa Wola . Both married shortly afterwards. He opened a practice with his wife - who was a laboratory technician - in Rozwadów and was instructed by the German occupiers to look after the local steelworkers. Since the practice was located adjacent to the Rozwadów ghetto , Łazowski also covertly helped the residents there. He also treated Polish underground fighters. In 1941 Stanisław Matulewicz († 2002), a doctor up close, told him that he had injected killed Proteus bacteria into a worker to protect him from being forced to work , and the Weil Felix test for the detection of typhus was positive. In conjunction with the pretense of typhus symptoms, the worker was placed in quarantine. They decided to fake an epidemic together to keep the occupiers out of the place. Both injected the Proteus injection into all patients with headache, rash, or fever. They adjusted the number of cases according to the seasons. The entire region was then quarantined. In the summer of 1943 Matulewicz moved away from the region. In February 1944 the German occupiers appointed a commission of inquiry because of the low death rate, but they found no abnormalities. In July 1944, Łazowski and his family hid from the Gestapo in Stalowa Wola after a German officer had warned him that the Gestapo knew about his treatment of Jews and resistance fighters.

1958 Łazowski emigrated with his family to the United States and became a professor of pediatrics in Chicago . In the 1970s he came back in contact with Stanisław Matulewicz, who was now a professor of radiology in Zaire . Both published their work during World War II in the American Society for Microbiological News in 1977 . In 1996, Łazowski published his autobiography.

Others

Łazowski's parents are included in the list of Righteous Among the Nations because they hid Jews during the occupation. How many lives Eugene Łazowski saved with the simulated epidemic is controversial.

Books

• Prywatna wojna: wspomnienia lekarza-żołnierza, 1933–1944 . 1996.

literature

• Solveig Grothe: The doctors who invented an epidemic . spiegel.de. 2nd July 2020.