Author: jgostl1980

A nurse, Irena Sendler, is credited with rescuing over 2,500 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto.

Head of the children’s section of Zegota – a secret organization that was a ‘Council to Aid Jews’. Her actions aroused the attention of the Gestapo, and in 1943 she was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death. A bribe saved her life, but nonetheless she was left unconscious in a forest, with both her arms and legs broken.

Within the Kraków Ghetto there were four prewar pharmacies owned by non-Jews. Tadeusz Pankiewicz was the only proprietor to decline the German offer of relocation to the non-Jewish side of the city. He was given permission to continue operating his establishment as the only pharmacy in the Ghetto.

He supplied the often-scarce medications and pharmaceutical products to the ghetto’s residents, often free of charge, and substantially improved their quality of life. Apart from health care considerations, Praniewicz dispensed hair dyes to disguise the identities of Jews, and tranquilizers given to fretful children to keep them silent during Gestapo raids.

In Rozwadow, Drs. Lazowski and Matulewicz (left) are credited with saving approximately 8,000 Jews by putting their medical knowledge to use. Knowing that the Germans were terrified of Typhus, the crafted a plan. They injected the town’s Jews with a benign form of typhus, and then informed the Nazis that an epidemic was at large. errified that it would spread, the Nazis quarantined the town and left it to its own devices.

Known as “the Polish Schindlers”, the two of them saved 12 ghetto communities in this crafty manner.

“I was not able to fight with a gun or a sword,” Lazowski said. “But I was able to find a way to scare the Germans.”.

“I was not able to fight with a gun or a sword,” Lazowski said. “But I was able to find a way to scare the Germans.”.