The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis (65 page)
Authors: Arthur Allen
As the service ended
:
Fryderyk Weigl, interview with Wójcik.
Thus it was left to Hermann
:
Eyer, “In Memoriam Rudolf Weigl,”
Zentralblatt für Bakteriologie, Parasitenkunde, Infektionskrankheiten und Hygiene
171 (1958): 377–79.
Even in 1983
:
Lonc and Go
ciniak, “Meanders of History,” 195.
Hermann Eyer, who was ingenious
:
Peter Eyer interview. See http://www.mvp.uni-muenchen.de/research.html?&L=34.
In 1956, the year
:
Meisel to Eyer, Sept. 17, 1956; Eyer to Meisel, Sept. 28, 1956; Eyer to Meisel, Sept. 6, 1957; Meisel to Eyer March 20, 1972; Eyer to Meisel, Dec. 22, 1975—all courtesy of Peter Eyer.
Fleck spent seven
:
Danuta Borecka interviewed on June 14, 2007, Barbara Narbutowicz on March 20, 1979, at pamiecmiejsca.tnn.pl.
Fleck was a wonderful
:
Borecka, interview with Lidia Perli
ska-Schnejder, March 30, 2007, at pamiecmiejsca.tnn.pl.
While they were living
:
Ibid.
Certain colleagues
:
Bozena Plonka-Syroka, personal communication.
When Balachowsky’s
:
Narbutowicz testimony, in LFZ, 4.4 Unterlagen und Notizen von Thomas Schnelle, Signatur 94.
By the time Fleck left
:
Klingberg, interview with author; Borecka interview.
Israeli embassy officials
:
Klingberg, interview with Thomas Schnelle, May 26, 1979.
From Israel, Fleck
:
K. Leszczyska, “Ludwik Fleck: A Forgotten Philosopher,” in
Penser avec Fleck: Investigating a Life Studying Life Sciences
, ed. Johannes Fehr et al. (Zurich: Collegium Helveticum, 2009), 34.
Although Ness Ziona was
:
Fleck and Z. Evenchik, “Latex Agglutination Test with Brucella Antigen and Antiserum,”
Nature
194 (1962): 548–50; interview of David Ben-Nathan and two former Ness Ziona employees who asked not to be identified in Tel Aviv, July 2012.
One of Fleck’s best friends
:
Aleksander Kohn, interview with Thomas Schnelle, LFZ, 4.4 Unterlagen und Notizen, Signatur 100.
Klingberg recruited
:
Klingberg, interview with author.
In 1961, less than
:
Interview with Ephrati, May 31, 1979, Schnelle papers.
His body was brought
:
Interview with Ben-Nathan and two former Ness Ziona employees, July 2012.
Afterword
When the Germans
:
See Charles M. Wheeler, “Control of Typhus in Italy 1943–1944 by Use of DDT,”
American Journal of Public Health
36 (1946): 119–29; see also Arthur Allen,
Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver
(New York: Norton, 2007), 140–42.
The Allies came too late
:
Naomi Baumslag,
Murderous Medicine: Nazi Doctors, Experimentation, and Typhus
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 26–27.
according to Weigl
:
Rudolf Weigl, “Immunization against Typhus Fever in Poland during World War II,”
Texas Reports on Biology and Medicine
5 (1947): 177–79.
Weigl’s lice
:
Henryk Mosing, “Rudolf Weigl uchony i człowiek na 50-lecie Jego badanad tyfusem plamistym” (Rudolf Weigl, scholar and man in his 50 years of research),
Przeglad epidemiolyczny
20 (1966): 93–100.
About 10,000 descendants
:
Iryna Kurhanova, interview with author.
Advances in knowledge
:
R. J. Duma et al., “Epidemic Typhus in the United States Associated with Flying Squirrels,”
Journal of the American Medical Associoation
245 (1981): 2318–23.
Nowadays fewer people
:
Didier Raoult and Veronique Roux, “The Body Louse as a Vector of Reemerging Human Diseases,”
Clinical Infectious Diseases
29 (1999): 893.
Typhus outbreaks still
:
David Walker, interview with author, UT-Galveston, May 2012.
A year later
:
D. Roault et al., “Outbreak of Epidemic Typhus in Russia,”
Lancet
352 (1998): 1151.
Other rickettsial
:
Dr. Allen L. Richards, interview with author, Naval Medical Research Center, May 2012.
Flea-carried murine
:
Jennifer Adjemian et al., “Murine Typhus in Austin, Texas, USA, 2008,”
Emerging Infectious Diseases
16 (2010): 412–17.
Overall, classical typhus
:
Richards interview; Walker interview.
Walker’s department
:
Walker interview.
Everything passes
:
Szybalski, interview with author.
Yet the story
:
uławski in
To Overcome Death: Professor Rudolf Weigl
, dir. Halina Szymura (TV Katowice, 2009).
“
. . . people bade goodbye
”:
Adam Zagajewski, “To Go to Lvov,” in
Without End: New and Selected Poems
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004).
This book could not have been written without the partnership of Izabela Wagner, Waclaw Szybalski, and Peter Eyer. Dr. Szybalski, a stalwart of Weigl’s wartime laboratory, has been central to keeping alive his mentor’s accomplishments. Szybalski shared his expertise and experiences, and introduced me to Izabela, a brilliant sociologist who joined my search for traces of Weigl and Fleck. She located and translated crucial documents, opened her home, and brought me to Ryszard Wojcik, who generously shared his materials, his astounding life story, and his friendship. Peter Eyer shared papers, letters, difficult evaluations, and (with his wife Gabriele) abundant hospitality. Stanislaw Kosiedowski was generous with time and assistance; his lwow.pl website provides an outstanding service to Polish history. Krystyna Weigl-Albert shared photographs and encouragement.
My agent, Sarah Chalfant has been a wonderful supporter. Angela von der Lippe, Tom Mayer, and Ryan Harrington at W. W. Norton gave me dedication, braininess, and a sense of fun. Basia Bernhardt has been a warm friend who made learning Polish an impossible delight. Marcel and Ania Drimer, Krystyna Boron, and Joris de Mooij helped with translations. George J. Otlowski, Jr., Nancy Zerbe, and Paul Abbey directed me to traces of Marian Ciepielowksi. Ann Hulbert, Jeff Baker, Walt Orenstein, and Paul Offit supported the project from the beginning, and Paul Weindling has been a patient adviser.
My book received generous support from Peter Kovler and the Kovler Fund of the Community Foundation of the National Capital Region, Edward Serrota at the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation, and the Wellcome Trust’s program in the humanities.
The following archivists and scholars offered meaningful assistance: Naomi Baumslag, Johannes Fehr, Sylwia Werner, Irena Steinfeldt, Shaul Ferrero, Amy Schmidt, Daniel Demellier, Dominique Dupenne, Sandra Legout, David Osterbur, Patricia Heberer, Peter Gohle, Udine Beier, Kornelia Grundmann, Marek Jaros, Holm Kirsten, Gert De Prins, Eric W. Boyle, Misha Mitsel, Valerie Hugonnard, Pawel Pluta, Sofia Dyak, Roman Lozynskyi, Anna Cieplinska, Jozefa Kostek, Thomas Schnelle, Marta Balinska, Susana Case, John Parascandola, Ellen Land-Weber, Andrzej Gamian, Rostyslav Stoika, Irina Kurhanova, Olga Tarasyuk, Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen, Jason Francisco, David Lee Preston, Michael Kogon, Arthur Silverstein, David Taylor, Bozena Plonka-Syroka, Christian Barouby, Allen Richards, David Walker, Eric Lohr, Steve Sestanovich, and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
My friends Jonathan Skolnik, Natan and Vered Guttman, Masha Belenky, Scott Wallace, Josh Rosenberg, Martha Weiss, Tamara Razi, and Peter Lewis listened and encouraged. Jim Heintz took vacation time to show me around Lviv with cultural and Cyrillic translations. Andreas Biefang, Susanna Weineck, Thomas Wiegold, and Birgit Böhret housed, fed and entertained me with warmth and style. My siblings Emily and Nick provided moral and financial support.
As always, Margaret Talbot gave me the best advice, love, and encouragement along the way.
I thank Ambassador Lee Feinstein for a glorious seder at his residence in Warsaw; Czeslaw Radzikowski and Stanislaw Ulaszewski for friendly tours of Wrocław; Marietta Steinhart for Viennese research; David Ben-Nathan for gathering old Fleck colleagues; Antoinette Nora Claypoole for her work on Louise Bryant; Joerg Dopheide and Alfred Smieszchala for tracing Wilhelm Dopheide; Howard Cohn for the postwar story of his father; Claude Romney for her thoughts about Auschwitz and Fleck; Marcus Klingberg and his daughter Sylvia for clinging to ideals; and Imre Goncze for sharing his painful story with me. And all the other witnesses, and the people they loved.
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
ABO blood-typing system, 28
Abramowicz, Owsiej, 177, 212–13
Abyssinia, 108
acridine, 209–10
Action N
, 122
Addis Ababa, 144–45
Adelsberger, Lucie, 286
agents of evil, 91