Prisoner doctor in a Soviet labour camp 1940-1.

I was born in Gorlice in southern Poland and studied medicine at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, where I obtained my MD in 1934. I started my first medical practice there while working at the nearby Bonifrater Hosptial and in 1936 married Zosia, my cousin and fellow student, who was working as a dentist. Our surgeries were side by side and shared a modest waiting room. Those were happy times. Living was inexpensive, the work was pleasant, and gradually we both built up our practices, which together produced an income that was satisfactory without being luxurious. Unfortunately , by 1939 the virus of antisemitism was spreading from Germany. Early in that year a motion was proposed to the Polish Medical Association in Cracow that Jewish doctors should be deprived of their membership , and soon afterwards I received a letter stating that my services at the hospital were no longer required. In the second half of 1939 there was confusion among the citizens of Cracow over what they should do about the dreadful stories of Nazi atrocities that they heard from the hundreds of Jewish refugees streaming into the city from Germany and other European countries. No guidance or advice was forthcoming from the Polish government, which had fled to Switzerland in the face of the overwhelming German invasion force. As the Germans began their advance on Cracow my wife and I had to consider what we should do. No one then really believed the stories of mass exterminations of Jewish people as it was thought that a civilised country such as Germany would be incapable of such acts. In any case, we naively supposed that in the event of an occupation only the Polish men would be harrassed and that the women, even the Jewish ones, would not be harmed. In the circumstances, however, we decided that it would be safer for both of us if I left Cracow and-made my way to eastern Poland. Accordingly, I gathered together a few clothes, my identity card and medical qualifications, my emergency case containing my instruments, a small stock of drugs, and my Polish vade mecum. With these I set out, hoping to cross the San river to take refuge in a province that was then occupied by Soviet forces. Arrest by the Russians My plan, unfortunately, did not succeed, and I was arrested by Russian troops in the railway station …