Weigl, who was born in Austria-Hungary on September 2, 1883, is the inventor of the world's first effective vaccine against typhus. He is credited with saving thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.
After the death of his father, Polish schoolteacher Józef Trojnar became Rudolf's stepfather. Thanks to this, Rudolf not only spoke Polish, but also nurtured Polish culture.
In 1907, he graduated in natural science from the University of Lviv, where he became an assistant to Prof. Józef Nasbaum-Hilarowicz, an outstanding scientist and academic.
During World War I, Weigl invented the world's first effective vaccine against typhus. He continued his work on it at the Department of General Biology of the Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. The department later became known as the Weigl Institute.
Both during the Soviet occupation of Lviv and after the Germans entered the city, Weigl was the head of the institute. He soon realized that his employment there gave many people a chance for survival.
Weigl employed about 2,000 Polish Jews, intellectuals and members of the Polish resistance movement. Most of those he hired assisted him in research and experiments with lice, and in return, they received food, protection, and doses of the vaccine when it was developed.
Weigl’s typhus vaccine was smuggled into ghettos in Lviv and Warsaw as well as a number of German-run concentration camps.
It is estimated that he was able to save around 5,000 lives during the German Nazi occupation.
After the end of the war, Weigl moved to the southern Polish city of Kraków, where he continued his research at the Jagiellonian University, and later - until his retirement in 1951 - at the University of Poznań in western Poland.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize twice. For the first time in 1942, his candidacy was blocked by the Germans in an act of revenge for refusing to cooperate during the war.
For the second time, Weigl’s Nobel candidacy was foiled in 1948 by Poland’s communist government. Nevertheless, he continued his work, first in Kraków, then in Poznań.
He died suddenly after a stroke at the age of 73 on August 11, 1957, in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane.
Weigl was only posthumously recognized for his achievements. He was awarded the Commander's Cross with the Star of the Polonia Restituta Order, and later also received the Righteous Among the Nations medal from Israel.
(jh/gs)
Source: sprawiedliwi.org.pl, twojahistoria.pl