The Faked Epidemic that Saved Hundreds of Lives

tyfus_szczepienie_nac.jpg, default, A doctor vaccinates a man against typhus, Kraków, 1943, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl, The Faked Epidemic that Saved Hundreds of Lives

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While the world fights a real pandemic, Culture.pl’s Juliette Bretan looks into a little-known story where the spread of a disease – or at least the appearance of it – managed to actually help people survive.

During World War II, two doctors reported that an outbreak of typhus had erupted in the south-eastern town of Rozwadów in occupied Poland, threatening the lives of local residents, and resulting in the entire area being quarantined. Or so it seemed. This was no ordinary epidemic – and far from leading to countless deaths, those doctors in fact helped save thousands of people.

Thrown into the medical fray

Born in 1913, Eugeniusz Łazowski had grown up in Warsaw – and, according to his memoirs, Prywatna Wojna (My Private War), had one dream in mind:

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I wanted to be a doctor, as my grandfather Edward had been, and I wanted to be in the army.

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Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

Aged 20, he entered the Medical Cadet School or Szkola Podchorazych Sanitarnych (SPS), the officers’ school of the Polish Army – which, as he remembered, ‘trained with its own medical and pharmaceutical corps’, with studies taking place at the university. He was in his final year, and preparing for his final group of exams, when war broke out. Immediately promoted to the rank of second lieutenant, he recalled that:

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The war caught me and my colleagues in a moment of suspended animation. We were officers but in the uniforms of cadet-sergeants. We were medical doctors but without diplomas. Neither here nor there.

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Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

Thumbnail — Cover of the book "Private war. Memoirs of a doctor-soldier 1933-1944", author: Eugeniusz Sławomir Łazowski, photo: Publisher: Cieślak i Szwajcer

Łazowski was first sent to the Fortress Military Hospital at Brześć, and was then evacuated south. After escaping captivity twice, he returned to Warsaw, where he married his long-term girlfriend, and passed his exams in January 1940. He then moved to his wife’s hometown, Stalowa Wola – where he heard that a chapter of the Polish Red Cross had been established in neighbouring Rozwadów by Princess Lubomirska of Charzewice, which had a flourishing Jewish shtetl prior to the Holocaust. After visiting the princess, Łazowski was offered a job as the clinic’s physician.

On 6th September 1940, he became a licensed doctor – and the story of the epidemic was underway.

The resistance comes to Rozwadów

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Doctor Stanisław Matulewicz and doctor Eugeniusz Łazowski, Rozwadów, 1942, photo: Central Library of Medicine / East News

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Initially, Łazowski recollects that life in the countryside seemed safer than in Warsaw, with food cheaper and easier to buy.

Within a few days of opening his office, Łazowski was approached by a captain in the Polish underground, and he began to take on patients from the underground, along with their families.

A little while later, Łazowski also received a letter from an old friend from SPS, Stanisław Matulewicz, who asked if there was need for a doctor in Rozwadów. Łazowski agreed to share his practice. In those early days, the pair also organised a first aid course for the underground aimed at helping the wounded, which took place under the cover of the Polish Red Cross and the Polish Central Welfare Organisation – both of which were officially recognised by the Germans.

Soon, however, Łazowski began to take on a more active role, thanks to a hole in a fence. It connected with a neighbouring house occupied by a Jewish family.

The hole had been created in spring 1941 to provide an escape route for Łazowski and his wife Murka, as arrests were beginning to increase in the area. As spring turned into summer, this became a means to offer help to the local Jewish community.

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It was a nice warm night and Murka and I were sitting in the yard when through the fence we heard a woman’s quiet voice say, “Doctor, we need your help.” […] The hole in the fence opened medical care to the neighbourhood Jews. It was a very dangerous relationship because Polish doctors were forbidden to treat Jews. Anyone caught was subject to immediate execution. We established a routine. Whenever a certain rag was hung up to dry near the hole, I knew I was needed. I went over to the other side and treated whoever was there. Sometimes I had quite a few people waiting. I dispensed medicine from the supplies of the Red Cross.

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Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

But this plan to help the Jews in Rozwadów – who, as Łazowski explained, were facing ‘intolerable’ conditions – was not the only clandestine operation he initiated in the town. And this is where the typhus epidemic came in.

Taking advantage of typhus

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Destroyed bridge on the San River in the area of Rozwadów, 1939, photo: www.audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)

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According to Łazowski, typhus was seen as a considerable threat to the occupying Germans:

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In General Government (GG), living conditions and hygiene were declining rapidly. The Children of War – Hunger and Disease – were flourishing. Infectious diseases were spreading, among them typhus was the worst. The problem was exacerbated by the growing concentration and movement of large groups of people. […] People moved from place to place in order to find work. People from the cities went to the countryside in search of food. People from the country went to cities to market their food. The trains became overcrowded. Lice love crowds, and in a crowd lice flourish…

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Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

Inevitably, the highly contagious – and often fatal – disease reached the area around Rozwadów, infecting patients treated by Łazowski.

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Soon after my first case of typhus I went to visit [Matulewicz]. He told me that he also had a patient with typhus, but to my surprise he said that he himself tested the patient’s blood sample. I did not think it was possible to do that under such primitive conditions. Stasiek just smiled and explained to me how he did it.

Author

Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

Matulewicz was relying on a test developed by Eastern European microbiologists Arthur Felix and Edward Weil during World War I. The test was based on cross-reactivity between antibodies produced in rickettsial infections with antigens of OX rickettsia bacteria, the agent of typhus, with antigens from OX strains of proteus vulgaris. During World War II, this became the standard test used by the Germans to confirm the presence of the disease.

As Łazowski explains, being able to perform the Weil-Felix test meant that a typhus diagnosis could be confirmed within hours, rather than days, allowing infected patients to be hidden from the Germans as quickly as possible – this was vital for Jewish patients, who were shot immediately if confirmed to be suffering from the disease.

The Germans also gave Polish doctors instructions on how to proceed if a typhus epidemic arose – something which would later be relied upon in Rozwadów. The illusion of reality became critical.

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During my visit, Stasiek also shared one of his ideas with me; if Proteus bacteria caused the positive Weil-Felix reaction with infected serum, could an intramuscular injection of Proteus bacteria give the same reaction?

[…]

It turned out that he had already performed this experiment and had proved his hypothesis. ‘You injected Proteus bacteria suspension into a man without fear of infection?’ I asked.

‘Since Proteus bacteria in the solution are killed by phenol, after injection the patient didn’t show any sign of infection, not even any red markings on the skin. Six days later, I examined the patient’s blood...’

‘And what?’ I asked.

‘The blood tested positive for Weil-Felix.’

‘Stasiek you made a significant scientific discovery!’ I exclaimed.

‘Uh,’ he grunted and smiled.

He had discovered that it was possible to induce a positive Weil-Felix reaction in a healthy person. And, no one in the world knew it!

Author

Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

The ‘infection’ spreads

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Doctor Eugeniusz Łazowski with cats, photo: Public domain

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Their guinea pig was a 35-year old Polish labourer who had been deported to Germany. Granted a 14-day leave, the labourer wanted to stay with his family for longer, and so came to Matulewicz for help.

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Stasiek felt that he could trust him and decided to help him and at the same time to prove his theory. The patient was informed that he would be the first person to get the injection and that some unpredicted reactions could occur. Stasiek also warned him about the consequences in case they were caught. Stasiek taught him how to simulate the symptoms of the disease and told him not to say anything to any members of his family. The coached patient soon developed severe headaches and became very vague. The family called Stasiek who injected the patient with his solution. Six days later he took the blood sample. The results were positive. He took another blood sample and sent this one to the official lab. The lab sent him back the red telegram – ‘The Weil-Felix test is positive.’

Author

Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

The success of this experiment convinced Łazowski that the test could be implemented on a larger scale.

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We could create a fake typhus epidemic and thus stop the Germans from arresting and deporting men from the Rozwadów area. After a while Stasiek agreed with me, although we were both very well aware of the danger involved if we were discovered.

I finally knew what my role in this war was to be.

Author

Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

A crucial part of their plan was ensuring the fake epidemic spread at the same pace a real one would, relying on official German protocol in reporting new cases. Working strategically from 1942-1943, Łazowski and Matulewicz planned sporadic infections in villages around Rozwadów which the Germans did not often visit, so the growth of the epidemic did not appear suspicious.

There was no risk to the ‘patients’ either: the Proteus bacteria suspension was innocuous, and only suggested a typhus infection. With their shrewd plan, Łazowski and Matulewicz could keep the population safe from deportation, and give the impression that they were vigilant local doctors, appeasing the occupying forces.

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With each positive result another patient became an epidemiological statistic and was registered with the Germans as a case of a dangerously contagious disease. In case of unexpected inspection or questioning by the county doctor, I had to have a written diagnosis and progress notes on each of the patients. No one questioned my taking blood samples. On the contrary, the taking of blood samples elevated my status as a good doctor among the patients’ relatives. By the time I received the results from the lab, my patients felt much better and the treatment programme was irrelevant to them.

Author

Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

The two doctors were, on occasion, presented with actual cases of typhus – and remained aware of the possibility that they could easily catch typhus themselves. Also concerned was Murka, Łazowski’s wife – he recollected later that he ‘could not tell her that the epidemic was not as bad as it looked.’ As the ‘epidemic’ began to spread, the Germans became aware of the risk the disease posed to their health. So, they decided that they needed to act quickly to stop the infection in its tracks. Signs warning of typhus appeared on sick houses in neighbouring villages, and they imposed a quarantine across the area.

Lives start being saved

Crucially, what the quarantine meant was that nobody could leave Rozwadów or the local area. The Germans received orders to stop the deportation of workers.

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The local people began to feel safe and more relaxed, although people were still worried about meeting their provisions quota. Each ‘Achtung, Fleckfieber’ sign assured me and Stasiek that we were succeeding in obtaining our goals and personally we felt safer. We toasted our success. Thank God for Stasiek’s discovery. The epidemic terrified the Germans. Only Stasiek and I knew that the epidemic did not exist and that we were winning our immunological war.

Author

Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

Sadly, the plan came too late to save much of the Jewish population of Rozwadów, who were either massacred or deported in July 1942. Because Jews with typhus were immediately shot, Łazowski was unable to risk injecting healthy ones with Proteus to deceive the Germans. However, historians believe that one result of the ruse was that the Jews in the town and surrounding areas faced less oppression.

German suspicions

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Second World War. Poland under German occupation. SS and German police parade in front of the general governor of Poland, Hans Frank, Adolf Hitler square in Krakow, Poland, October 1940, photo: East News

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Still, the plan to save Poles from deportation did not go without a hitch. The Germans had already queried sporadic cases, and at one point, suspicions rose about the epidemic suddenly running rampant through Rozwadów. They formed a commission in 1944 to investigate.

By then, Łazowski was working on his own: Matulewicz had left the area with his family in 1943.

He knew that he had been following standard practice in reporting cases, which would clear him of any wrongdoing.

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They could only suspect that I took samples of the infected blood and distributed it into several test tubes and marked them with different names before sending them on for analysis in order to increase the number of cases. In any case, the goal of the investigation would be to check on the patients, taking blood samples and analysing them in their own proven laboratories. What would happen if the specialists in those laboratories would find something specific in the serum of these patients? I decided to face the commission with a cyanide capsule in my pocket.

Author

Trans. Alexandra Barbara Gerrard

Łazowski also had another plan: he would present the Germans with ‘the oldest, sickest and skinniest’ patients first, after a welcoming party ‘with plenty of food and drink’. He also warned the Germans against close contact with his ‘patients’. As a result, the Germans only gave the ‘patients’ a perfunctory check over, and took blood samples.

The end of the epidemic

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Dr Stanisław Matulewicz and Dr Eugeniusz Łazowski - authors of the famous "immune war" with Germany, "American Medical News", 1978, photo: Central Library of Medicine / East News

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After this close call, Łazowski realised he needed to start diminishing the ‘epidemic’, along the lines of a normal infection – but this happened to be at the same time as the eastern front was closing in.

Łazowski and his wife Murka debated as to whether to return to Warsaw. As panic began to take hold in Rozwadów, one German who Łazowski had previously treated warned him that he was on a Gestapo hit list. Łazowski, Murka and their young child fled through that fortuitous hole in the fence to Stalowa Wola, and survived the rest of the war there.

After the war, Łazowski left Poland in 1958, emigrating to America to become Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Illinois Medical Center. For years, he did not know the fate of his friend, Matulewicz, but later discovered that he had become Professor of Radiology at Kinshasa University in Zaire.

The story was finally revealed in the 1970s, after the pair published an English article in The American Society for Microbiological News called ‘Serendipitous Discovery of Artificial Positive Weil-Felix Reaction used in Private Immunological War.’ It was reviewed in The British Medical Journal and later disseminated via the Reuters News Agency.

Prywatna Wojna, the full story, was published in the 1990s.

Łazowski died aged 92 on 16th December 2006 in Eugene, Oregon, after saving an estimated 8000 people. He is now dubbed ‘the Polish Schindler’, along with Matulewicz.

Written by Juliette Bretan, April 2020

Language English

second world war

20th century history

world war ii