by Arthur Allen
On July 20, 1941, the mathematician: Hugo Steinhaus, Wspomnienia i zapiski (Wrocław: ATUTA, 2010), 202–3.
Chapter 6: Parasites
The Soviets abandoned: Christoph Mick, Kriegserfahrungen in einer multiethnischen Stadt: Lemberg 1914–1947 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 512–13.
The Nazis, meanwhile: Teresa Prekerowa, “Relief Council for the Jews, 1942–1945,” in The Jews in Poland, ed. Chimen Abramsky et al. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 163–67; Józef Garliski, Poland in the Second World War (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1985), 45.
In the weeks before: Shoah Foundation, Hornstein.
The Lwów chapter: Mick, Kriegserfahrungen, 520–22.
There he used his skills: Yitzhak Sternberg, Under Assumed Identity (Israel: Ghetto Fighters Press, 1986), 49, 83–87.
More than 130,000 Jews died: Mick, Kriegserfahrungen, 500–501; David Kahane, Lvov Ghetto Diary, trans. Jerzy Michalowicz (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 141–42; Stefan Szende, The Promise Hitler Kept (New York: Roy, 1945), 50–51; Eliyahu Yones, Smoke in the Sand: The Jews of Lvov in the War Years 1939–1945 (New York: Gefen, 2004); Leon W. Wells, The Death Brigade (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 123–24.
Before abandoning Lwów for: Dieter Schenk, Der Lemberger Professorenmord und der Holocaust in Ostgalizien (Bonn: Dietz, 2007), 86–87; Eva Szybalski, Lwów, a City Lost: Memories of a Cherished Childhood, 130. The book is a first-person account by Szybalski’s father, Stanisław, brother of Wacław Szybalski. It is published online at home.comcast.net/~julsta/szybalski.pdf.
A Russian chauffeur who: Wacław Szybalski, interview with author, July 2011.
Amid plundering and arson: Schenk, Professorenmord, 88–91; Lala Fischman and Steven Weingartner, Lala’s Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 90–91.
Clocks set to: Mick, Kriegserfahrungen, 493.
The first posters went: Frank Stiffel, The Tale of the Ring: A Kaddish (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), 38–39.
The morning of July 3: Schenk, Professorenmord, 11.
“I heard the howling”: Benedikt Friedman, Ich träumte von Brot und Büchern (Vienna: Promedia, 1992), 52–53.
Staff at Weigl’s . . . “spectacle of death”: Kryski, “Kartki 37,” accessed at http://lwow.home.pl/weigl/krynski.html.
A firing squad: Shoah Foundation, Hornstein; Kurt I. Lewin, A Journey through Illusions (Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1994), 30–37; Marek Redner, Recollections on the Life and Martyrdom of Jewish Medical Doctors in the Lvov Ghetto (n.p.: A. S. Redner, 2003), 8.
A Nazi propaganda film: Deutsche Wochenschau, “Lvov/Lemberg massacre; Jews arrested,” USHMM, RG-60.0267, tape 201; “Jews beaten, bodies, crowd (Lwow),” RG-60.0328, tape 202B.
“We could see them beating Jews”: Shoah Foundation, Alex Redner.
The number of Jews murdered: Mick, Kriegserfahrungen, 500; Szende, Promise, 50–51. See also John-Paul Himka, “The Lviv Pogrom of 1941: The Germans, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Carnival Crowd,” in Canadian Slavonic Papers 8 (2011): 209–42.
The last order: Kahane, Diary, 10, 32; Janina Opieska-Blauth, Drogi i spotkania (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie, 1979), 78–81; Tom Gross, “Goodbye, Golden Rose,” Guardian (Manchester), Sept. 2, 2011, accessed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/02/ukraine-holocaust-denial-lviv/print.
Hitler had ordered: Schenk, Professorenmord, 114.
Things went differently: Ibid., 121–24.
The pediatrician Franciszek Groër: Ibid., 124.
The dapper playwright: Wanda Ladniewska-Blankenheim, YVA, testimony O.3/3118.
The crime scene was: Jadwiga Złotorzycka, “Professor Rudolf Weigl (1883–1957) i jego instytut,” in Analecta: Studia i materiały z dziejów nauki 1 (1998), accessed at http://lwow.home.pl/analecta.html.
Two days later: Peter Eyer, personal communication with author, Aug. 2011.
“Anyone who witnesses”: Weigl, “Pokoj,” in Zwyciy tyfus: Instytut Rudolfa Weigla we Lwowie: Dokumenty i wspomnienia, ed. Zbigniew Stuchly (Wrocław: Sudety, 2001).
German officials who: Andrzej Wincewicz et al., “Rudolph Weigl, (1883–1957)—A Scientist in Poland in Wartime Plus Ration quam vis,” Journal of Medical Biography 15 (2007), 111; Rafal Bubnicki, “Polak z krwi I koci” (Pole of flesh and blood), Rzeczpospolita 11 (1994).
When the Nazi invasion began: Zbigniew Stuchly, Nov. 17, 1994, tape recording by Halina Shepherd of Radio Lviv, courtesy of National Museum Przemyl.
The institute grew quickly: Szybalksi, “Genius”; Stanisława Woyciechowska, interview with Ryszard Wójik; Josef Daniels to Erich von Redwitz, Nov. 19, 1946, courtesy of Peter Eyer.
How many Poles: Tomasz Cieszyski, “Dzieło Rudolfa Weigla ofiarowane ludzkoci i Polsce” (Rudolf Weigl’s work for Poland and humanity), 1994, accessed at http://www.lwow.home.pl/weigl/cieszynski.html; list of feeders at http://www.lwow.home.pl/weigl/weiglowcy.html.
The Poles working: Szybalski, interview with author.
The regime created a ghetto: Lviv Oblast Records, USHHM, RGM31.003; Report from Katzman to Frank; Selected records from the Lviv State Oblast Archive, RGM 31.001m Vermerk Betrifft: Judenumsiedlung; “Umsiedlung Lemberger Juden,” Lemberger Zeitung, Nov. 15, 1941.
The Nazis also set up a: Wells, Brigade, 87–93; Stanisław Lenz, testimony Yad Vashem 0.3/3093. B. 1902; Samuel Drix, Witness to Annihilation: Surviving the Holocaust: A Memoir (Washington: Brassey’s, 1994), 73–88; Kahane, Diary, 51; Philip Friedman, Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust, ed. Ada June Friedman (New York: Jewish Publications Society, 1980), 303–12.
For a while, doctors: Redner, Recollections, 9.
This was probably: Dieter Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941–1944: Organisation und Durchführung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996), 115.
The Nazis confiscated: Kahane, Diary, 21, 70–71; Drix, Witness, 34.
Fleck spent the first: Fleck, “Untersuchungen zum Flecktyphus im Lemberger Ghetto in den Jahren 1941–1942,” in Denkstile, 505–14; Fleck, “Wie wir den Anti-Flecktyphus-Impfstoff im Lemberger Ghetto hergestellt haben,” ibid., 521–25.
It may have been: Szybalski, interview with author. Fleck is on a partial list of wartime Weigl employees compiled in 1994 by Tomasz Cieszyski, Zbigniew Stuchly, Andrzej Nespiak, and Jan Starzyk, accessible at www.lwow.com.pl/weigl/weiglowcy.html.
However, Fleck did meet: Fleck, “Untersuchungen,” 505, 510.
A while later: Transkript der Handschrift von Frau Dr. Seeman, LFZ, Unterlagen und Notizen von Thomas Schnelle, Allgemeine Korrespondenz und Notizen von TS 1978–1993, 4.1 Signatur 97; also Shoah Foundation, 26409 Bruno Seeman.
As the weather turned: Fleck, “Badania nad tyfusem plamistym w getcie lwowskim” (Typhus research in the Lwów ghetto), Yad Vashem, Marek Dworzecki-Archiv, Sign p. 10/File 52, 366–72.
The outbreak began: Redner, Recollections, 30.
That winter: Fleck, “Badania,” 368.
The pattern had been: Martin Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, 1939–1945 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1965), 218; Christopher Browning, “Genocide and Public Health: German Doctors and Polish Jews, 1939–1941,” in The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 146–61; Wilhelm Hagen, “Krieg, Hunger und Pestilenz in Warschau, 1939–43,” Gesundheitswesen und Desinfektion 8 (1973): 115.
Frank, the German: Browning, “Genocide,” 154–58.
Hirszfeld, who had been: Hirszfeld, One Life, 182, 191, 252, 259.
On April 24, 1943: Himmler’s speech is reprinted in U.S. Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, vol. 4 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1946), 574.
Chapter 7: The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl
“Its base was the farmers”: Mirosław uławski, “Weiglówka” {Memories of Lwów), accessed at lwow.com.pl/weiglowka.html.
The tens of mi
llions: Stefan Kryski et al., “Weigl’s Method of Intrarectal Inoculation of Lice in Production of Typhus Vaccine and Experimental Works with Rickettsia prowazeki,” Annales Academiae Medicae Gedanensis 4 (1974): 21.
Vaccine production began: Ibid., 20–51; Szybalski, “Genius.”
The Gestapo arrested: Mark Kac, Enigmas of Chance: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 85–89.
Marek Zakrzewski: Zakrzewski, “Wspomnienia karmiciela wszy” (Memories of a louse feeder), accessed at http://lwow.home.pl/semper/wszy1.html.
Banach usually sat: Szybalski, interview with author.
Szybalski was particularly: Szybalski, interview with John J. Greczek, March 2007.
Banach’s love for Lwów: Kac, Enigmas, 82.
Szybalski’s father, Stefan: Eva Szybalski, Lwów, a City Lost: Memories of a Cherished Childhood, 144, accessed at http://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/3143300/lwow-a-city-lost-comcastnet.
In 1943, the Germans: Martin Broszat, Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik, 1939–1945 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1965), 169–73.
The Nazis were proving: Benedikt Friedman; Ich träumte von Brot und Büchern: Zornige Erinnerungen eines jüdischen Österreichers (Vienna: Promedia, 1992), 90; David Kahane, Lvov Ghetto Diary, trans. Jerzy Michalowicz (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 77.
Wherever Jews went: Kahane, Diary, 70–71.
“The brutality of these”: Kogon, Hell, 20.
In the hospital: Fleck, “Wie wir den Anti-Flecktyphus-Impfstoff im Lemberger Ghetto hergestellt haben,” in Denkstile, 521–23; Fleck, “Untersuchungen zum Flecktyphus im Lemberger Ghetto in den Jahren 1941–1942,” ibid., 505–14.
When relatives got: Marek Redner, Recollections on the Life and Martyrdom of Jewish Medical Doctors in the Lvov Ghetto (n.p.: A. S. Redner, 2003), 31–36.
Samuel Drix: Drix, Witness to Annihilation: Surviving the Holocaust: A Memoir (Washington: Brassey’s, 1994), 93–95.
Most of the survivors: Hirszfeld, One Life, 221.
After the war: “Briefwechsel mit Ludwik Hirszfeld,” in Denkstile, 574.
News of Fleck’s vaccine: Tadeusz Kielanowski, “My Meetings with Ludwick Fleck in Lublin during the Years 1945–1950,” Kwartalnik historii nauki i technologi (1983): 582–85.
At the Weigl: Anna Fabiaska, “Wspomnienia preparatorki” (Memories of a preparatorki), accessed at http://lwow.home.pl/weigl/fabianska.html.
Wacław Szybalski’s brother: Eva Szybalski, Lwów, 177–79.
“We were one big”: uławski, “Weiglówka.”
Disease was a permanent: Alfred Jahn, Z Kleparowa w wiat szeroki (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossoliskich, 1991), 120–24.
For others, illness: uławski, “Weiglówka.”
Stan Szybalski contracted: Eva Szybalski, Lwów, 183.
Weigl’s senior staff: Kryski, “Weigl’s method,” 19–23.
The Lwów institute teemed: Jerzy Gardynik, “Rola Instytutu Tyfusowego profesora Rudolfa Weigla w osłonie ludnoci i konspiracji polskiej w okupowanym Lwowie,” accessed at http://lwow.home.pl/semper/tyfus1.html.
Louse feeding was an effective: uławski, “Weiglówka”; Gardynik, “Rola”; Elbieta Lonc and Grayna Gociniak, “Professors Rudolf Weigl and Ludwik Hirszfeld—In the Meanders of History,” Annals of Parasitology 58, no. 4 (2012): 194–95.
Jerzy Sokolowski, who: Sokolowski, interview with Ryszard Wójcik.
The junior Weigl: Szybalski, interview with author, July 2011.
German officers who: Josef Daniels to Erich von Redwitz, Nov. 19, 1946; Annemarie Rohrmann to Redwitz, Nov. 16, 1946.
But while it: Eva Szybalski, Lwów, 175–76.
Eyer permitted Weigl: Starzyk, interview with Wójcik.
Others falsified bills: Peter Eyer, interview with author, May 2011.
Eyer’s deputy in Lwów: Krystyna Karlicz, interview with Ryszard Wójcik, June 1979.
Six of his lab assistants: Peter Eyer, interview with author.
For all that: Testimony by Sofia Bujwid, Aug. 1, 1958, IPN, Przybył-kiewicz file. See also Przybyłkiewicz, “Origin and Development of the Chair of Microbiology at Cracow University,” Polski tygodnik lekarski 20 (1965): 288–89.
The Jews of Kraków: Kampf den Seuchen: Deutscher Ärzte-Einsatz im Osten (Kraków: Deutscher Osten, 1941), 154–55; BA-Ludwigsburg BA-Mil B162/9805, Eyer Statement in Walbaum Trial, Feb. 9, 1967.
In early 1944: Jehuda L. Stein, Jüdische Ärzte und das jüdische Gesundheitswesen in Krakau vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zur Schoáh (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 2006), 39–56.
After showing the factory owner: Fleck, “Untersuchungen,” 508–9.
A week later: Fleck, “Wie wir,” 522.
A number of Polish and: Janina Opieska-Blauth, Drogi i spotkania (Paths and encounters) (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie, 1979), 78–81.
Finally, after: Fleck, “Untersuchungen,” 505–11; Fleck, “Bericht über den Aufenthalt im KZ Auschwitz,” in Denkstile, 490n.
The “vaccine trial” came at: Ernst Hofbauer, Verwehte Spuren: Von Lemberg bis Czernowitz: Ein Trümmerfeld der Erinnerungen (Vienna: Ibera, 2004), 69.
A few days later: Fleck, “Untersuchungen,” 510; Redner, Recollections, 16–18.
In all, about 50,000: Mick, Kriegserfahrungen, 501.
After the SS: “Vernehmung Medizinalrat Dr. Wilhelm Dopheide,” Sept. 22, 1950, BA-Ludwigsburg, B162/2102 ARZ294/1959, Kolonko u.a.
Kurzrock survived for: Fleck, “Bericht,” 490n. An alternative version of Kurzrock’s fate is in Drix, Witness, 155.
On September 7, the ghetto: Stefan Szende, The Promise Hitler Kept (New York: Roy, 1945), 83.
Dr. Franciszek Groër, Fleck’s: Fleck and F. Lille, “Serologic Studies in Blood Cells: On the Serologic Differentiation on White Blood Cells,” American Review of Soviet Medicine 3 (1945): 174.
One afternoon in 1942: Tomasz Cieszyski, “Dzieło Rudolfa Weigla ofiarowane ludzkoci i Polsce” (Rudolf Weigl’s work for Poland and humanity), 1994, accessed at http://www.lwow.home.pl/weigl/cieszynski.html.
Smuggling vaccine to Jews: Danuta Nespiak, “Profesor Rudolf Weigl był Polakiem z wyboru” (Professor Rudolf Weigl—Pole by choice), in Semper Fidelis (Wrocław: Towarzystwo Miłoników Lwowa i Kresów Południowo Wschodnich, 1994); M. Sahaydakovskyy and S. Hnatush; “Professor Rudolf Weigl: A Life Dedicated to Science and Humanity” (publication information unknown), accessed at www.lwow.com.pl/weigl/Weigl-ukr.html.
Moser later recalled: Meisel to Eyer, Jan. 12, 1957; Meisel to Eyer, Jan. 20, 1972; Eyer to Moser, March 28, 1972; Moser to Eyer, April 4, 1972. All letters are in the possession of Peter Eyer.
Halina Ogrodziska, an activist: Ellen Land-Weber, To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), accessed at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp21571.
Felicja ended up: Shoah Foundation, 45624 Felicja Mikolajczyk-Meisela; Wójcik interview with Henryk Meisel, Felicja Mikolajczyk-Meisela, Edward Mikolajczyk, June 1979; Danuta Rymkiwicz, “In Memory of Professor Henryk Meisel,” Dec. 15, 1981-dated typescript, courtesy of Peter Eyer; Meisel to Eyer, Jan. 12, 1957; Meisel to Eyer, March 20, 1972.
“Every physician was”: Interview with Peter Eyer.
“I estimate quite conservatively”: Eyer to K. W. Jötten, March 13, 1957, courtesy of Peter Eyer.
The historical record: Wilhelm Hagen to Bernhard Kläß, Dec. 16, 1975. Peter Eyer possesses numerous letters from German, Polish, and Ukrainian character witnesses for Eyer’s wartime behavior, and the dozens of testimonies from Weigl laboratory employees support this.
The Gestapo, many of: 1972 Testimony by former Gestapo officers Herbert Hamann, Rudolf Koerner, and Kurt Heinmneyer in BA-Ludwigsburg, BA-Mil B162/9805; Az 119f Js 2/72 Beschuldigte Prof Dr Hermann Eyer, u.a.
After the war, these same: Peter Eyer, interview with author.
Eyer may have been anti-Semitic: Hirszfeld, One Life, 338–39.
Of all the German: Jakob Gilson, “Prof. Dr. Lu
dwig Hirszfeld” (PhD diss., University of Munich, 1965), courtesy of Peter Eyer.
The Nazis tolerated Weigl: The original article, “Das Fleckfieber überwunden; ein Sieg deutscher Wissenschaft in zwölfter Stunde,” Marburger Zeitung, April 15, 1943, is BA, R55/20912, as are responses from various officials to the error it contains: April 21, 1943, letter to the Reichsregierung press department from Behring; June 16, 1943, RKI, Institut fur Infektionskrankheiten, to Kurzel, press department in Reichministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda; Haubold memo, June 26, 1943; Rundspruch, Propaganda Ministry.
In December 1942: Emil-von-Behring-Bibliothek/Arbeitsstelle für Geschichte der Medizin der Philipps-Universität Marburg, Signatur 230; Weindling, Epidemics, 236–37.
Weigl was invited: Andrzej Wincewicz et al., “Rudolph Weigl, (1883–1957)—A Scientist in Poland in Wartime Plus Ration quam vis,” Journal of Medical Biography 15 (2007): 113.
Weigl did, however: Maria Kordas and Paul Weindling, “Working and Payment Conditions at Production of the Vaccine against Typhus by the Weigl Method in Lvov during World War II,” 1–8, courtesy of Paul Weindling.
Much as the Germans: Haas to Weigl, Sept. 10, 1942, Emil-von-Behring-Bibliothek/Arbeitsstelle für Geschichte der Medizin der Philipps-Universität Marburg, Signatur 230.
On February 4, 1943: Anna Seeman letter to Schnelle, April 2, 1980, in LFZ, 4.4 Unterlagen und Notizen v. Thomas Schnelle, “Fragebogen,” Signatur 100; Fleck, “Wie wir” 522; Shoah Foundation, 26409 Bruno Seeman.
The SS man shrugged: Shoah Foundation, Bruno Seeman; “Testimony of SEMAN Bronislaw, Concentration Camp #103739, provided June 21, 1945,” in Zydowski Institut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw).
Thus Fleck saved: Anna Seeman letter to Schnelle; Shoah Foundation, Bruno Seeman.
Chapter 8: Armies of Winter
Hitler’s war plan: Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare (New York: St. Martin’s, 1986); Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis and War in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 19–24, 67–77; NA, RG238, ser. M1019, roll 47, Mrugowsky, 1190–94.