Eugene Lazowski

Who was Eugene Lazowski?

Dr. Eugene Lazowski born Eugeniusz Sławomir Łazowski was a Polish medical doctor who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust by creating a fake epidemic which played on German phobias about hygiene. By doing this, he risked the German death penalty, which was applied to Poles who helped Jews in the Holocaust.

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. Thanks to a medical discovery by his friend, Dr Stanisław Matulewicz, Łazowski created a fake outbreak of Epidemic Typhus, a dangerous infectious disease. He spread it in and around the town of Rozwadów, which the Germans then quarantined. This saved an estimated 8,000 Polish Jews from certain death in German concentration camps during the Holocaust. Łazowski did this in utmost secrecy because he, like all Poles, were under the threat of execution by the Germans if they helped Jews. In 1958, Lazowski emigrated to the United States on a scholarship from Rockefeller Foundation and in 1976 became professor of Pediatrics at the State University of Illinois. He wrote a memoir entitled Prywatna wojna reprinted several times, as well as over a hundred scientific dissertations.