Ludwik Rajchman – Doctor without Borders
Fantastic doctor, a fierce revolutionary, an earnest anti-fascist and a champion for children’s health around the world. He was the mastermind behind the organisation of UNICEF.
Ludwik Rajchman is born in Warsaw to a very famous family. He is the son of Aleksander Rajchman, the first director of the Warsaw Philharmonic, and Melania Hirszfeld, an activist for socialist and women’s movements. His brother, Aleksander Rajchman, is a notable mathematician, his sister Helena Radlińska is a sociologist, while his cousin, Ludwik Hirszfeld, is a prominent microbiologist. Ludwik also decides to go into the medical field: he studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and receives a doctorate in bacteriology. From 1907 to 1909 he does post-doctoral work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
Ludwik’s youth comes at the very beginning of revolutionary unrest: this certainly has an impact on the youth, who is very aware of what is happening in his ‘country’ (Poland does not exist at this time. The area where Rajchman lives is part of the Russian Empire). Rajchman joins the Polish socialist party, and after the execution of agricultural workers in the village of Łanięta in the Łódź Voivodeship in March 1905, he begins to publish leaflets calling for workers’ strikes, and he is arrested. Rajchman spends four months in prison: his release is aided by his connections in Poland’s financial circles.
Between 1909 and 1913, Rajchman teaches at the Jagiellonian University. After that, he joins the Royal Institute of Public Health in London. Only a few years later, he is leading London’s Central Laboratory of Dysentery. He also researches the Spanish flu epidemic and Heine-Medin disease (polio). While remaining in London during World War I and being a part of government circles, Rajchman actively lobbies for an independent Poland.
In 1918, Rajchman returns to Warsaw, where, thanks to his family’s connections, he persuades the new Polish government to create an epidemiology centre. It is later known as the State Hygiene Institute, which exists to this day. In 1923, Rajchman becomes its first director. He is always incredibly busy. During the struggle against the typhus epidemic in Eastern Europe, representatives of the League of Nations take note of his diligence. The activist doctor is recruited for the creation of the League of Nations’ epidemiology committee.
Rajchman spends much time on the road, learning from experience and studying. From 1921 through 1938, he is the official leader of the League of Nations Health Organisation. He devotes a lot of time to the fight against infections, disease prevention, and the protection of children and the disabled. While working for the League of Nations in China, he manages to establish a quarantine office which markedly improves public health.
In the 1930s, Ludwik Rajchman is an advisor to the Chinese government on medical issues. He is also an expert for the National Economic Council for the Restoration of China. At this time, he meets with members of the Chinese elite: Chiang Kai-shek and T. V. Soong, the Chinese economy minister. In the 1940s, Rajchman is an advisor to Soong and a special representative of China in the United States.
During World War II, the prime minister of the Polish government in exile, General Sikorski, entrusts Ludwik Rajchman with the task of persuading United States president Franklin Roosevelt to give aid to the Polish refugees. Sikorski issues his envoy a diplomatic passport, which allows him to escape from France through Spain and Portugal and eventually reach Washington DC.
After the end of the war, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) commissions Rajchman to prepare a report and recommendations for how to address the sharp deterioration of the state of health in Europe. The new communist government of Poland appoints him to be its representative at the UNRRA. Rajchman is very hesitant to work with the new Polish regime, but his love for Poland wins out. Due to his efforts, the Polish health authority receives facilities and medical equipment with which research could be conducted.
When the UNRRA is dissolved, Ludwik Rajchman, at the final meeting in Geneva, makes an appeal for the creation of a foundation for helping children around the world (at that time, childhood mortality exceeds all conceivable metrics and inspires great fear). His proposal is accepted, and on 11th December 1946, by a UN General Assembly decision, an emergency organisation is created for delivering aid to children who were affected by World War II: the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
Rajchman acts as its chairman from 1946 to 1950. The fund aids children in countries on both sides of the war. It was created as a temporary organisation, but it continues to aid children around the world to this day. The main goals of UNICEF are the same as they have been from the beginning: the reduction of childhood mortality and the expansion of primary education. The most famous aid programmes Rajchman organises are in Eastern Europe: in Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia, as well as Germany.
In 1961, Rajchman takes part in a ceremony organised in Warsaw in his honour. Poland’s Minister of Health presents Rajchman with an award ‘for outstanding achievements in the medical field’. Among his many other awards are the Commander’s Cross with Star of Poland Restituta and the French Cross of the Legion of Honour.
Rajchman’s last trip to Poland is in 1963. He visits his sister and the institute he had led for many years. Ludwik Rajchman dies in 1965 at his French estate from complications due to Parkinson’s disease. Very little is known about his personal life: Rajchman was married, he had two daughters (Irena and Marta) and a son, Jan Aleksander, a most outstanding Polish scholar and inventor of magnetic-core memory.
Translated by Katherine Alberti
Tytuł (nagłówek do zdjęcia)
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