The weapon of intelligence: how a man created a disease that saved thousands of lives, 1940s
The weapon of intelligence: how a man created a disease that saved thousands of lives, 1940s
During World War II, a brutal invasion of Poland occurred in September 1939 as the Germans advanced over the Polish border to expand their territory as part of a campaign to invade weaker and less infastructionally competent countries in Europe at the time.
The Polish people fought fiercly against the Germans, but they did not have the equipment, efficiency or the strategic tactics that made the German army so effective. This however, caused some people to fight the war in their own way through their intelligence and adaptability. This kind of effort was seen with Dr Eugene Lazowski.
Lazowski noticed that Typhus (a disease common in Europe at that time) was killing 750 Poles a day. Through experimentation, Lazowski discovered a dead bacteria strain that would cause a patient to show a positive result for Typhus upon testing, however the patient would not suffer from any harmful physical aspects of the bacteria, but merely just show that they had the strain in their system.
Lazowski used this genius idea to show German superiors that many patients he was dealing with had a deadly form of Typhus, which they believed. In response, the Germans ordered many areas in Poland be quarantined. These quarantined areas would become safe havens for Jews and Polish rebels, saving them from the Holocaust.
Lazowski later moved to America after the war. He wrote a memoir called Prywatna wojna (My Private War).
It is speculated that Lazowski saved at least 8,000 lives during the war from certain death. He returned to Poland in the 1980s where he was welcomed as a hero. He died in 2006 , aged 93.
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