A louse-feeder was a job in

interwar In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relativel ...

and Nazi-occupied Poland, at the '' Lviv Institute for Study of Typhus and Virology'' and the associated Institute in Kraków, Poland. Louse-feeders were human sources of blood for

lice Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result o ...

infected with

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

, which were then used to research possible vaccines against the disease. Research into a typhus vaccine was started in 1920 by parasitologist

Rudolf Weigl Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl (2 September 1883 – 11 August 1957) was a Polish biologist, physician and inventor, known for creating the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine each year betwe ...

. Weigl and his wife Zofia Weigl were some of the earliest lice feeders. During the Nazi occupation of the city, louse-feeding became the primary means of support and protection for many of the city's Polish intellectuals, including the mathematician

Stefan Banach Stefan Banach ( ; 30 March 1892 – 31 August 1945) was a Polish mathematician who is generally considered one of the 20th century's most important and influential mathematicians. He was the founder of modern functional analysis, and an original ...

and the poet

Zbigniew Herbert Zbigniew Herbert (; 29 October 1924 – 28 July 1998) was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer and moralist. He is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers. While he was first published in the 1950s (a volume title ...

. While the profession carried a significant risk of infection, louse-feeders were given additional food rations, were protected from being shipped to slave labour camps and

German concentration camps German concentration camps may refer to different camps which were operated by German states: *Concentration camps during the Herero and Namaqua genocide ** Shark Island concentration camp * Cottbus-Sielow concentration camp in Cottbus interning Jew ...

, and were permitted to move around the occupied city. Typhus research involving human subjects, who were purposely infected with the disease, was also carried out in various

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

, in particular at

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

and

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

and to a lesser extent at

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

Background

French

bacteriologist A bacteriologist is a microbiologist, or similarly trained professional, in bacteriology -- a subdivision of microbiology that studies bacteria, typically Pathogenic bacteria, pathogenic ones. Bacteriologists are interested in studying and learnin ...

Charles Nicolle Charles Jules Henri Nicolle (21 September 1866 – 28 February 1936) was a French bacteriologist who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his identification of lice as the transmitter of epidemic typhus. Family Nicolle was born to Aline L ...

showed in 1909 that

(''Pediculus humanus corporis'') were the primary means by which the typhus bacteria (''Rickettsia prowazekii'') were spread. In his experiments Nicolle infected a chimpanzee with typhus, retrieved the lice from it, and placed them on a healthy chimpanzee who developed the disease shortly thereafter. Further work established that it was lice excrement rather than bites which spread the disease. Nicolle received a

Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, according ...

for his work on typhus in 1928. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, beginning in 1914, Rudolf Weigl, a Polish

parasitologist Parasitology is the study of parasites, their hosts, and the relationship between them. As a biological discipline, the scope of parasitology is not determined by the organism or environment in question but by their way of life. This means it f ...

of Austrian background was drafted into the Austrian army and given the task of studying typhus and its causes. Weigl worked at a military hospital in

Przemyśl Przemyśl (; yi, פשעמישל, Pshemishl; uk, Перемишль, Peremyshl; german: Premissel) is a city in southeastern Poland with 58,721 inhabitants, as of December 2021. In 1999, it became part of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship; it was pr ...

, where he supervised the newly established Laboratory for the Study of Spotted Typhus. After Poland regained its independence, Weigl was hired in 1920 as a Professor of Biology at the

Jan Kazimierz University The University of Lviv ( uk, Львівський університет, Lvivskyi universytet; pl, Uniwersytet Lwowski; german: Universität Lemberg, briefly known as the ''Theresianum'' in the early 19th century), presently the Ivan Franko Na ...

in Lwów, at the '' Institute for Study of Typhus and Virology''. While there, he developed a vaccine against typhus made from grown lice which were then crushed into a paste. Initially the lice were grown on the blood of guinea pigs but the effectiveness of the vaccine depended on the blood being as similar to human blood as possible. As a consequence, by 1933, Weigl began using human volunteers as feeders. While the volunteers fed healthy lice, there was still the danger of accidental exposure to some of the typhus-carrying lice in the institute. Additionally, once the lice were infected with typhus, they required additional feeding, which carried the risk of the human feeder becoming infected with the disease. Weigl protected the donors by vaccinating them beforehand, and although some of them (including Weigl himself) developed the disease, none died. However, the production of the vaccine was still a potentially dangerous activity, and it was still difficult to produce the vaccine on a large scale. At the time Weigl's vaccine was the only one in existence which could be employed in practical applications outside of controlled settings. The first widespread use of his vaccine was carried out in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

by Belgian missionaries between 1936 and 1943.

Procedure

The development of the typhus vaccine involved several stages. First, the lice larvae had to be bred and then fed on human blood. Once they matured, they were removed from the feeders, held down in a clamp machine especially designed by Weigl, and anally injected with the strain of the typhus bacteria. At that point the infected louse had to be fed human blood for about five more days. This stage of the production process carried the greatest risk to the human feeder of contracting the disease. Weigl and his staff tried to prevent the danger by heavily vaccinating the feeders beforehand. Once the louse was sufficiently infected, it was removed from the human feeder, killed in a solution of

phenol Phenol (also called carbolic acid) is an aromatic organic compound with the molecular formula . It is a white crystalline solid that is volatile. The molecule consists of a phenyl group () bonded to a hydroxy group (). Mildly acidic, it req ...

, and then dissected. The contents of the louse abdomen (its feces) was removed and then ground up into a paste. The paste was then made into the typhus vaccine. The feeding was done through the use of specially-constructed small wooden boxes, 4 cm by 7 cm (1½" x 2¾"), developed by Weigl. The boxes were sealed with

paraffin Paraffin may refer to: Substances * Paraffin wax, a white or colorless soft solid that is used as a lubricant and for other applications * Liquid paraffin (drug), a very highly refined mineral oil used in cosmetics and for medical purposes * Alkane ...

on the top which prevented the lice from escaping, and the underside consisted of a screen made of a fabric

sieve A sieve, fine mesh strainer, or sift, is a device for separating wanted elements from unwanted material or for controlling the particle size distribution of a sample, using a screen such as a woven mesh or net or perforated sheet material. T ...

, adapted by Weigl from sieves that were used by local peasants to separate wheat husks from the seeds. A typical box contained 400 to 800 lice larvae which would mature as the feeding took place. The sieve bottom allowed the lice to stick out their heads and feed on the human flesh. A standard feeding period took thirty to forty-five minutes, and was repeated with the same lice colony for twelve days. Usually, an individual feeder would accommodate from 7 to 11 boxes (of 400 to 800 lice each) on his or her leg, per feeding session. Typically men would place the boxes on their calves, to minimize the discomfort of the bites, while women feeders placed them on their thighs, so that the bite marks could be covered up by a skirt. A nurse had to watch over the feeding process as the lice would feed beyond the point of being gorged on the blood and could burst if left on the human flesh for too long. Other dangers that employment at the institute involved, in addition to the contraction of typhus, concerned

allergic reactions Allergies, also known as allergic diseases, refer a number of conditions caused by the hypersensitivity of the immune system to typically harmless substances in the environment. These diseases include hay fever, food allergies, atopic derma ...

to the vaccine or

asthma Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, cou ...

attacks because of the louse feces dust.

World War II

First Soviet occupation

After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, Lwów initially came under Soviet occupation. During this period Weigl's institute continued to function, although Poles, particularly those escaping from the German-controlled areas, were banned from being employed there. The Soviet authorities

deported Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...

ethnic Poles from the seized territories, sending them to

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

and other areas deep within the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, despite the official prohibition on employment, Weigl used his prestige and influence (during this time

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

visited the institute) to secure the release of several Polish would-be deportees and in some cases managed to obtain permission for those who had already been exiled to return. These individuals were then given work in the institute as either nurses, interpreters (Weigl himself did not speak Russian) or as some of the first lice feeders; people who were given the job as a means of protecting them from persecution by the Soviet authorities. The vaccine produced by the institute during this time was earmarked for the Red Army, aside from a small quantity used in the civilian sector.

Nazi occupation

In June 1941, after the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, Lwów was taken over by the Germans. Weigl's institute, now renamed ''Institut für Fleckfieber und Virusforschung des OKH'', was kept open because, much like the Soviets before them, the Germans were interested in the applications of the typhus vaccine among their front line soldiers. The Institute was made directly subordinate to the German military, which, as it turned out, ended up giving its workers significant protection against the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

. The Nazis converted a building of the former Queen Jadwiga Grammar School into Weigl's new laboratory and ordered that the production of the vaccine be stepped up, with the whole output being shipped to the German armed forces.

Role of institute under Nazi occupation

In light of the ''

Sonderaktion Krakau ''Sonderaktion Krakau'' was a German operation against professors and academics of the Jagiellonian University and other universities in German-occupied Kraków, Poland, at the beginning of World War II. It was carried out as part of the much bro ...

'', a German operation in which many distinguished professors from

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (Polish: ''Uniwersytet Jagielloński'', UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and the 13th oldest university in ...

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

were arrested and sent to

, the danger that a similar fate would befall Lwów intellectuals was very real. As a result, in July 1941, Weigl began hiring prominent Polish intellectuals of the city for his institute, many of whom had lost work as a result of the closure of all Polish institutions of higher learning by the Nazis. In fact, soon after, the Nazis carried out a

massacre of Lwów professors In July 1941, 25 Polish academics from the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) along with the 25 of their family members were killed by Nazi German occupation forces. By targeting prominent citizens and intellectuals for elimination, the Nazis hop ...

. Weigl managed to convince the occupation authorities to give him full discretion as to whom he hired for his experiments, even as he himself refused to sign the so-called

Volksliste The Deutsche Volksliste (German People's List), a Nazi Party institution, aimed to classify inhabitants of Nazi-occupied territories (1939-1945) into categories of desirability according to criteria systematised by ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich H ...

which would have identified him as an ethnic German (since he was of Austrian background) with access to privileges and opportunities unavailable to Poles. Similarly, he refused an offer to move to Berlin, direct a dedicated institute and become a

Reichsdeutsche ', literally translated "Germans of the ", is an archaic term for those ethnic Germans who resided within the German state that was founded in 1871. In contemporary usage, it referred to German citizens, the word signifying people from the Germ ...

r. The group of scholars hired by Weigl were often brought in by

Wacław Szybalski Wacław Szybalski (9 September 1921 – 16 December 2020) was a Polish-American professor of oncology at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin–Madison Medical School. Life Wacław Szybalski was born in September 1 ...

, an

oncologist Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an ''oncologist''. The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος (''ó ...

, who was also put in charge of supervising the lice feeding. Association with the institute offered a measure of protection. Weigl was able to continue his research, and even hire more people, some as research assistants, others as lice feeders, often among those threatened by Nazi authorities with deportation, or even resistance members. The feeders of lice who were employed at the institute were issued a special version of the

Kennkarte The ''Kennkarte'' was the basic identity document in use inside Germany (including occupied incorporated territories) during the Third Reich era. They were first introduced in July 1938. They were normally obtained through a police precinct and bore ...

, the ''"Ausweis"'', which noted both that they might be infected with typhus and that they worked for an institution of the German military, the ''"Oberkommando des Heeres"'' (Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army). As a result, the workers of the institute, unlike other Poles in the city, could move freely about and, if stopped by the police or the Gestapo, were quickly released.

Lwów academics and intellectuals as feeders

In autumn of 1941, the mathematician

began working at the institute as a lice feeder, as did his son, Stefan Jr. Banach continued to work at the institute feeding lice until March 1944, and managed to survive the war as a result, unlike many other Polish mathematicians who were killed by the Nazis (although he died of lung cancer shortly after the war's conclusion). Banach's employment at the institute also gave protection to his wife, Łucja (it was she who purchased the notebook that eventually became the Scottish Book), who was in particular danger because of her Jewish background. The poet

also spent the occupation as a lice feeder in Weigl's institute. According to Alfred Jahn, a geographer and future

rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

of the

University of Wrocław , ''Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau'' (before 1945) , free_label = Specialty programs , free = , colors = Blue , website uni.wroc.pl The University of Wrocław ( pl, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, U ...

, "Almost the entire University of Lwów worked at Weigl's". Two other future rectors of the University of Wrocław, Kazimierz Szarski and Stanisław Kulczyński, also survived the war as feeders of lice. With numerous academics gathering in one place under the pretense of lice feeding and research, underground education and research often took place. The actual feeding time took only about an hour a day, which left the remainder of the day free for conspiratorial activity and scientific discourse.

Anti-Nazi resistance fighters as feeders

Additionally, Weigl began employing members of the Polish anti-Nazi resistance, the

Home Army The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) esta ...

, in his institute, which provided them with sufficient cover to carry out their underground activities. Aleksander Szczęścikiewicz and Zygmunt Kleszczyński, two leaders of the underground scout movement, the Grey Ranks (''Szare Szeregi''), also worked at the institute. Due to his special position, Weigl was allowed to have a radio at the institute – otherwise ownership of a radio by Poles was punishable by death – which was used by him and members of the Polish resistance to gather up-to-date news of the war otherwise censored by German propaganda.

Attempts to save Jews via employment in the institute

When the Germans began the systematic murder of the Lwów Jews, Weigl tried to save as many as he could by hiring them as well. Among others, work at the institute saved the life of the bacteriologist Henryk Meisel. Weigl also tried to protect the bacteriologist Filip Eisenberg, from Jagiellonian University, by offering him a position. However, Eisenberg believed that he could survive the war by hiding in Kraków, turned down Weigl's offer, and in 1942 was caught by the Nazis and sent to the

Belzec extermination camp Belzec (English: or , Polish: ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution" which in total ...

where he was murdered. In the end, about 4000 people (feeders, technicians and nurses) passed through Weigl's institute, of whom about 500 are known by name.

Smuggling of the vaccine

While all of the vaccines produced by the institute during this time were supposed to go to the German army, some portion was smuggled out by the employees associated with the Polish resistance and shipped to partisan units of the Home Army, as well as underground movements in the

Lwów Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...

and

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

ghettos, and even to sick individuals in the

and

Majdanek Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...

concentration camps. According to the famous Polish-Jewish pianist and

diarist A diary is a written or audiovisual record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries have traditionally been handwritten but are now also often digital. A personal ...

Władysław Szpilman Władysław Szpilman (; 5 December 1911 – 6 July 2000) was a Polish pianist and classical composer of Jewish descent. Szpilman is widely known as the central figure in the 2002 Roman Polanski film '' The Pianist'', which was based on Szpilman ...

(the protagonist of the 2002 movie '' The Pianist''), because of his vaccine, Weigl became "as famous as Hitler in the Warsaw ghetto", with "Weigl as a symbol of Goodness and Hitler as a symbol of Evil".

Soviet re-capture of the city

After the Red Army, along with the Home Army (

Operation Tempest file:Akcja_burza_1944.png, 210px, right Operation Tempest ( pl, akcja „Burza”, sometimes referred to in English as "Operation Storm") was a series of uprisings conducted during World War II against occupying German forces by the Polish Home ...

) recaptured Lwów in July 1944, Weigl's institute was disbanded and moved to central Poland, along with most other Polish inhabitants of Lwów. Weigl would continue his research in

Lice feeding around the world

Human lice feeders were also used in America in the 1940s. The ''Wilmington Morning Star'' reported that the U.S. government's researchers paid around 60 lice feeders $60 a month (), rising to $120 () due to the lack of people willing to participate. Humans were used because lice failed to thrive on animals, until it was discovered that some could live on an "Easter bunny" called Samson. Samson and his descendants were used to conduct hundreds of experiments.

Notable feeders

* Jerzy Albrycht *

(mathematician, founder of

functional analysis Functional analysis is a branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. Inner product space#Definition, inner product, Norm (mathematics)#Defini ...

) * Feliks Barański (mathematician) * Jerzy Broszkiewicz (author, essayist) * Józef Chałasiński (sociologist) * Leszek Elektorowicz (poet, essayist) *

(poet) *

Adam Hollanek Adam Hollanek (born 4 October 1922 in Lwów, died 28 July 1998 in Zakopane) was a Polish science fiction writer and journalist, and founder of the ''Fantastyka'' magazine, the first science-fiction-oriented monthly magazine in the whole Eastern ...

(science fiction author) * Artur Hutnikiewicz (historian of Polish literature) * Alfred Jahn (geographer, polar explorer) *

Bronisław Knaster Bronisław Knaster (22 May 1893 – 3 November 1980) was a Polish mathematician; from 1939 a university professor in Lwów and from 1945 in Wrocław. He is known for his work in point-set topology and in particular for his discoveries in 1922 of ...

(mathematician) * Seweryn Krzemieniewski (biologist) *

Jan Noskiewicz Jan Noskiewicz (8 October 1890 – 27 August 1963) was a Polish entomologist specialising in Hymenoptera and Strepsiptera. Noskiewicz was born in Sanok. He was Professor of Systematic Zoology and Zoogeography at (then) Breslau now Wroclaw Un ...

(zoologist) * Lesław Ogielski (veterinarian, medical researcher) *

Władysław Orlicz Władysław Roman Orlicz (May 24, 1903 in Okocim, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) – August 9, 1990 in Poznań, Poland) was a Polish mathematician of Lwów School of Mathematics. His main interests were functional analysis and topology: Orlicz spac ...

(mathematician) *

Stanisław Skrowaczewski Stanislaw Pawel Stefan Jan Sebastian Skrowaczewski (; October 3, 1923 – February 21, 2017) was a Polish-American classical conductor and composer. Biography Skrowaczewski was born in Lwów, Second Polish Republic (now Lviv, Ukraine). His pa ...

(classical conductor) *

Stefania Skwarczyńska Stefania Skwarczyńska ''de domo'' (17 November 1902 in Kamionka Strumiłowa – 28 April 1988 in Łódź) was a Polish theorist and historian of literature, theatrologist, full professor, doctor ''honoris causa'' of the University of Łódź, ...

(historian of literature) * Kazimierz Smulikowski (geologist) *

(

) * Mirosław Żuławski (writer, screenwriter) – who wrote about his work as a lice feeder in his screenplay ''Trzecia część nocy'' ('' The Third Part of the Night'')

Legacy

Weigl continued his research on typhus after the war. After his death, his studies were picked up by his friends, students, and his second wife, Anna-Herzig Weigl. Rudolf Weigl was posthumously awarded the medal of

Righteous among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sav ...

by the

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

in 2003. His contributions to saving lives during the Nazi German occupation of Poland have been compared to those of

Oskar Schindler Oskar Schindler (; 28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist, humanitarian and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and amm ...

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , title=History of Banach spaces and linear operators , publisher=Birkhäuser , author=Pietsch, Albrecht , authorlink=Albrecht Pietsch , year=2007 , page=638 , isbn=978-0-8176-4367-6 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MMorKHumdZAC&q=Banach+survived+the+war&pg=PA638 {{cite book , title=Murderous medicine: Nazi doctors, human experimentation, and Typhus , publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group , author=Baumslag, Naomi , year=2005 , pag
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, isbn=978-0-275-98312-3 , url=https://archive.org/details/murderousmedicin0000baum/page/133 {{Cite book , first=Roman , last=Kałuża , authorlink=Roman Kałuża , title=Through a reporter's eyes: The life of Stefan Banach , publisher=Birkhäuser , year=1996 , isbn=978-0-8176-3772-9 , url =https://books.google.com/books?id=i3ZrfMinChkC&q=Stefan+Banach , others =Ann Konstant {{cite web , url=http://www.lwow.com.pl/m.htm , title=Dlaczego Stefan Banach? , publisher=Moj Lwow , work=www.lwow.com , access-date=2012-02-29 {{cite web, url=http://www.lwow.home.pl/Weigl/human.html , author=Stefan Krynski , title= Rudolf Weigl (1883–1957) , publisher=Lwow.home.pl , date=1957-08-11 , access-date=2012-02-17 {{cite book , title=Herbert. A to Polska właśnie , publisher=Wydawnictwo Slaskie , author=Łukasiewicz, Jacek , page=20 , isbn=978-83-7023-889-6 , year=2001 {{cite web, url=http://lwow.home.pl/weigl/in-memoriam.html , author=Waclaw Szybalski, title=The genius of Rudolf Stefan Weigl (1883–1957), a Lvovian microbe hunter and breeder – In Memoriam , publisher=Lwow.home.pl , date= , access-date=2012-02-17 {{cite book , title=Stefan Banach. Remarkable Life, Brilliant Mathematics , editor-last1=Jakimowicz , editor-first1=Emilia , editor-last2=Mironowicz , editor-first2=Adam , publisher=Gdansk University Press , year=2011 , location=Gdansk , pages=17, 21 , isbn=978-83-7326-827-2 {{cite book, author1=Irwin W. Sherman, author2=American Society for Microbiology, date=2006, title=The power of plagues, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LOjqWL-u9VMC&pg=PA122, publisher=Wiley-Blackwell, page=122, isbn=978-1-55581-356-7, access-date=2012-02-19 {{cite web, url=http://www.lwow.com.pl/semper/weigl2.html , title=Rudolf Stefan Weigl. Profesor Rudolf Weigl był Polakiem z wyboru. , publisher=Lwow.com.pl , date= , access-date=2012-02-17 {{cite book , title=When food kills: BSE, E. coli, and disaster science , publisher=Oxford University Press , author=Pennington, Thomas Hugh , year=2003 , pag
190
, isbn=978-0-19-852517-2 , url=https://archive.org/details/whenfoodkillsbse0000penn, url-access=registration , quote=Rudolf Weigl Schindler. Righteous Among the Nations Honored by Yad Vashem By 1 January 2011. Poland
{{webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120817165333/http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/righteous/pdf/virtial_wall/poland.pdf , date=17 August 2012 , Yad Vashem

External links

Lice Rickettsioses Nazi war crimes in Poland Bioethics Nazi human subject research Animal testing Obsolete occupations