Kazimierz Pelczar
Encyclopedia
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
and pioneer of oncology
Oncology
Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with cancer...
research and treatment, he was murdered in the Ponary massacre
Ponary massacre
The Ponary massacre was the mass-murder of 100,000 people, mostly Polish Jews, by German SD and SS and Lithuanian Nazi collaborators Sonderkommando collaborators...
.
Biography
Kazimierz Pelczar was born on 2 August 1894 in TruskawiecTruskawiec
Truskawiec may refer to:*Truskavets, Ukraine - Truskawiec in Polish*Truskawiec, Łódź Voivodeship...
. His father, Z. Pelczar, was a physician himself, owner of a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
and author of about 20 articles. In the years 1912–1914 he studied medicine at Jagiellonian University
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University was established in 1364 by Casimir III the Great in Kazimierz . It is the oldest university in Poland, the second oldest university in Central Europe and one of the oldest universities in the world....
in Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
. During the First World War he was conscripted by the Austro-Hungarian Army
Austro-Hungarian Army
The Austro-Hungarian Army was the ground force of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy from 1867 to 1918. It was composed of three parts: the joint army , the Austrian Landwehr , and the Hungarian Honvédség .In the wake of fighting between the...
, he was taken prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
by the Imperial Russian Army
Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of around 938,731 regular soldiers and 245,850 irregulars . Until the time of military reform of Dmitry Milyutin in...
in 1915 and soon joined the Red Cross. After the First World War he joined Polish Army and served as a physician for the Siberian Division (1918–1920). In 1920 he returned to the newly independent Poland
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
, finishing studies at the Jagiellonian University where in 1925 he got his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
.
During the following years he worked in Collegium Medicum in Kraków, as well as in Germany and France. In 1929 he got his habilitation
Habilitation
Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...
, and in 1930 he was invited to the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
, Wilno Voivodship in Poland, to head the Department of General and Experimental Pathology of Faculty of Medicine (from 1930 to 1939). He also was the head of Department of Bacteriology (1935–1937), the dean
Dean (education)
In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...
(school year 1937-1938) and vice-dean in the following year. Under his leadership the Vilnius Department of Medicine flourished, with many important publications, and with students who would went to become notable academics and physicians themselves (like professor J. Olszewski of Toronto, member of the Moscow Academy of Sciences M. Beklemishev, and J. Sztachelski, Poland's Minster of Health). In 1936 he organized the international 4th Congress Against Cancer in Vilnius.
In May 1931 noting the lack of oncology-related health care in the Vilnius region
Vilnius region
Vilnius Region , refers to the territory in the present day Lithuania, that was originally inhabited by ethnic Baltic tribes and was a part of Lithuania proper, but came under East Slavic and Polish cultural influences over time,...
he established the Institute of Oncology and Clinic, which constantly grew under his supervision. He was personally engaged in treatment of many patients, in addition to his duties as a lecturer and researcher. He was a member of several Polish and international oncological organizations.
With the coming signs of war, he was offered positions by many other universities - from Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
- but refused. After the German and Soviet invasions of Poland
Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)
The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II. Sixteen days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union did so from the east...
in 1939, Vilnius was occupied by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Professor Pelczar helped the Polish Red Cross
Polish Red Cross
Polish Red Cross is the Polish member of International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It was founded in 1919 by Dr. Benjamin Reschovsky of Warsaw City Hospital and recognized by the Red Cross on July 24th 1919, and its first president was Paweł Sapieha....
provided care for thousands of refugees. In 1941 after German invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, he continued to help various refugees, among them, Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
hiding from the Nazis, and working with medical services of Polish resistance organization
Polish resistance movement in World War II
The Polish resistance movement in World War II, with the Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistance in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, covering both German and Soviet zones of occupation. The Polish defence against the Nazi occupation was an important part of the European...
Armia Krajowa
Armia Krajowa
The Armia Krajowa , or Home Army, was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
. At night, from 16 to 17 September 1943, he was arrested by the Lithuanian Security Police
Lithuanian Security Police
The Lithuanian Security Police, also referred to as Saugumas , was a Lithuanian Nazi collaborationist police force that operated from 1941 to 1944. It had a staff of approximately 400 people, 250 of them in Kaunas and around another 130 in Vilnius....
('Sauguma') in a standard retaliatory actions against the Armia Krajowa, whose members on 15 September assassinated a Lithuanian Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
collaborator, member of Lithuanian security police, Marianas Padabas. Out of 100 arrested members of Polish intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
, 10 were randomly selected and executed on the morning of September 17, becoming ones of the 100 000 victims who died in Ponary
Ponary massacre
The Ponary massacre was the mass-murder of 100,000 people, mostly Polish Jews, by German SD and SS and Lithuanian Nazi collaborators Sonderkommando collaborators...
. Professor Pelczar was among them, along with fellow professor of the Stefan Batory university, Mieczysław Gutkowski, 2 Polish army officers, 3 officials, a lawyer and 2 engineers. A day later an order from Germany ordered his release - but it was too late.
Works
The main fields of medicine in which he worked and published many publications were oncology, arthrology, cardiology, hematology and halth-resort science. In total, he published about 85 large scientific works in Polish, French and German and many popular articles in everyday press.Selected works:
- "Transplantation of malignant tumours" (Paris, 1928)
- "Aleksin and cancer" (Paris, 1931)
- "Importance of inheritance in human pathology" (1932)
- "Repiratory System and Blood" (Wilno, 1936)
- "Pathology of Respiratory System and Blood" (Wilno, 1936)
- "Pathology of pancreas" (1937)
- "General Pathology" (Wilno, 1938),