Dr. Eugene Łazowski - The Doctor Who Fooled the Nazis
Physician
Born: 1913, Częstochowa, Poland
Died: December 16, 2006, Eugene, Oregon, U.S.A.
Dr. Eugene Łazowski was a Polish physician who used medical science and creativity to save over 8,000 people during World War II.
Eugene Łazowski was born in Poland and earned his medical degree from the Józef Piłsudski University in Warsaw in 1940. When the war began, he joined the Polish Army as a military doctor and worked on a Red Cross train. He was captured and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp, but he managed to escape and reunite with his family. Soon after, he began working with the Polish Red Cross in the small town of Rozwadów.
The people of Rozwadów lived under constant fear. The Nazis frequently arrested Polish citizens, accusing them of being part of the resistance. Many were deported to forced labor camps in Germany, where conditions were brutal. Prisoners worked long hours in factories, mines, and chemical plants, often dying from hunger, exhaustion, or disease. Łazowski was determined to help his community. He often treated members of the resistance in secret, fully aware that if he was caught, he would be killed. To protect himself, he always carried a cyanide pill so that he could take his own life rather than be tortured by the Gestapo.
One of Łazowski’s closest friends was Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz, another doctor in a nearby village. Matulewicz discovered that a harmless bacteria could trick medical tests into showing a false positive result for typhus, a deadly disease spread by lice. The Nazis were terrified of typhus because it could wipe out entire groups of soldiers. When they suspected an epidemic, they would quarantine entire towns rather than risk spreading the illness.
Together, Łazowski and Matulewicz realized they could use this discovery to save lives. They began quietly injecting villagers with the harmless bacteria so that their blood tests would come back positive for typhus. Łazowski carefully reported cases to the Nazi authorities, making sure the numbers looked realistic. In the winter, when typhus usually spread faster, he reported more cases. In the summer, he reported fewer. Over time, the area appeared to be suffering from a major outbreak. The plan worked. The Nazis declared Rozwadów and nearby villages unsafe and avoided mass deportations there. For almost two years, Łazowski’s “epidemic” kept the community safe from forced labor and death camps. In the end, his actions saved more than 8,000 people.
The danger, however, was constant. At one point, Nazi collaborators reported that villagers did not seem sick. Suspicious, the Germans sent a team of doctors to investigate. Warned by the resistance, Łazowski quickly organized villagers to pretend to be weak and bedridden. When the German doctors arrived, they were too afraid of catching lice to perform careful examinations. They only glanced at the “patients” before taking blood samples. Those samples, of course, tested positive for typhus back in Germany, and the ruse continued.
By 1943, the Gestapo had also discovered that Łazowski was secretly treating resistance fighters. Knowing his life was in immediate danger, he fled Rozwadów with his family. Unlike many others, they survived the war.
After the war ended, Eugene Łazowski moved to the United States. He became a professor of pediatrics at the University of Illinois in Chicago, where he continued to dedicate his life to medicine. Though he built a new life far from Poland, his most lasting legacy remained the thousands of people he had saved during the Holocaust.
Łazowski never saw himself as a hero. He once said he had simply done his duty as a doctor and as a human being. Yet his courage and cleverness proved that even in the darkest times, one person’s actions can protect an entire community. His story is a powerful reminder of the impact of bravery, compassion, and the responsibility to stand up for others.
SOURCES:
Berger, Miles, and Kamrouz Ghadimi. “Necessary Heroes and Ethos, from Fighting Nazis to COVID-19.” Anesthesiology, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Dec. 2020, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7386672/.
“Eugeniusz Lazowski.” Eugeniusz Lazowski | Center for Holocaust & Genocide Education, chge.uni.edu/eugeniusz-lazowski.
Guru, SAGES. “Eugene Lazowski - The Doctor Who Fooled the Nazis.” SAGES Leadership Academy, 21 Nov. 2022, www.sagesleadershipacademy.com/eugene-lazowski-the-doctor-who-fooled-the-nazis/.
Keywords: Science, Wartime, Courage, Creativity, Responsibility, Selflessness, Take Risks for Others, Stand Up for Your Beliefs