Eugeniusz Lazowski
Background to the Crisis
Thousands of Polish Jews who were persecuted and targeted for death by the Germans received help from Polish citizens. The help ranged from small acts of kindness to major acts of heroism. These efforts took place despite the fact that from October 1941 on, non-Jewish Poles themselves were the subject to capital punishment at the hands of the Nazis if found offering any kind of help to a person of Jewish faith or origin. (Poland was the only country in German-occupied Europe in which the death penalty was for illegal actions of this kind.)
Announcement in 1941 of death penalty for Jews captured outside the Ghetto and for Poles helping Jews Partial translation: “[Capital] punishment awaits those, who knowingly aid such Jews by harboring them. Hereby is not only included the furnishing of overnight facilities and health care, but also any additional assistance, for instance transportation in a vehicle of any sort, purchasing of Jewish business interests, and so forth.”
Additional Information About Rescuer(s)
Eugeniusz Łazowski obtained his medical degree from the Józef Piłsudski University in Warsaw in 1940. During World War II Łazowski served as a Polish Army Second Lieutenant on a Red Cross train, then as a military doctor in the Home Army, the main Polish resistance group.
Following the German occupation of Poland, Łazowski spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp, from which he made a solo escape. He reunited with his family and began practicing medicine with the Polish Red Cross in Rozwadów with his medical-school friend Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz.
Łazowski was well aware of the risks he was taking by creating a fake typhus epidemic. He always carried a cyanide pill with him in the event he was captured. In late 1943, the Gestapo became suspicious. The Gestapo knew that Łazowski had been treating members of the resistance but had decided to keep him alive in order to contain the typhus “epidemic.” When Łazowski learned about what the Gestapo knew about him, he escaped Rozwadów with his family.
Eugeniusz Łazowski as a Polish army officer
Dr. Eugeniusz Łazowski and Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz reunited in Poland
Dr. Eugeniusz Łazowski
After the war, Łazowski continued to live in Poland, which came under communist rule in 1948. Fearing retaliation from former collaborators, he never spoke of what he had done in Rozwadów as long as he remained in Poland. In 1960, with the help of a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship, Łazowski emigrated to the United States. In 1976 he became a professor of pediatrics at the University of Illinois Medical Center. He published over a hundred research papers in Polish and English.
In 1998, Łazowski contacted 17-year-old film major Ryan Bank about making a documentary (“A Private War”) about Łazowski ’s story. The project included a 16-day trip to Poland—Łazowski ’s first trip back to Poland in more than 50 years—that included a joyful reunion with villagers from Rozwadów. Bank said of Łazowski: "He said he took an oath as a doctor to help people, and the oath didn't differentiate among people. There was no option for him, there was no thought process about ‘Should I or shouldn't I.’”
Dr. Łazowski ’s parents were also Holocaust-era rescuers. His father, Kazimierz Łazowski, and mother, Zofia Łazowska, hid Jewish families in their home in Warsaw. They have been designated Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
Timeline
1913 Born in Czestochowa, Poland
1942 With his former medical school classmate Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz, creates a fake typhus epidemic by injecting healthy patients with dead bacteria so that they would test positive for the disease.
1960 Emigrates to the U.S.
1976 Becomes Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Illinois Medical Center
1991 Publishes his memoir, Private war: Memoirs of a doctor soldier, 1933-1944
2006 Eugeniusz Łazowski dies in Eugene, Oregon
Primary and Other Sources
“Eugeniusz Slawomir Lazowski.” In Who's Who in Polish America. Ed. Boleslaw
Wierzbianski. New York: Bicentennial Publishing Corporation, 1996. Available at: http://www.poles.org/db/l_names/Lazowski_ES.html
Łazowski, Eugeniusz Sławomir. Private war: Memoirs of a doctor soldier, 1933-1944.
Chicago: The author, 1991. http://www.worldcat.org/title/private-war-memoirs-of-a-doctor-solder-1933-1944/oclc/86107744
Łazowski Family Rescue Story. The Righteous Among the Nations. Jerusalem: Yad
Vashem: The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId=4039720