“The lecturer’s hawk eye fell on my blue bows in my hair and I hear the question.\u00a0 Can my friend in blue ribbons remind me of what I talked about at the last lecture?”- recalled years later then student Bogus\u0142awa Benendo-Kapu\u015bci\u0144ska her first contact with Professor Ludwik Hirszfeld after the Second World War (1884-1954). The fame of this researcher went far beyond the university, although it was his students\u2019 attachment and admiration that saved his life during the Second World War.<\/p>\n
Hirszfeld, as a world-renowned doctor, immunologist, bacteriologist, and the founder of a new science – seroanthropology – was considered to be one of the last great discoverers.\u00a0He contributed to the division of blood into groups – 0, A, B and AB or the discovery of the cause of the serological conflict, for which he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1950.<\/p>\n
Conducted his innovative research both before and after the Second World War, he had to go into hiding because of his Jewish origin during the German occupation.\u00a0In his memoirs published in 1946 (The Story of One Life)<\/i>, he described in detail who helped him avoid the Holocaust.\u00a0It is an exceptionally long list of workers, peasants, townspeople, intellectuals, landowners and priests.\u00a0As Professor Hirszfeld, in hiding, with a passion worthy of a researcher, conducted sociological observations on the attitude of Poles towards Jews and on Polish-Jewish relations, the value of his testimony is even more enormous.\u00a0He devoted many passages of his book to those issues, trying to present his analyzes and reflections very objectively, without aversion and hatred towards Poles.\u00a0As he himself said, during the occupation “we were clearly lucky in our misfortune: we only met good people.”<\/p>\n
It is significant, that he never gave the name of the key figure saving him from the ghetto, however mentioned him four times in his memoirs. Being aware of the criminal actions of the new communist authorities, probably from caution, Hirszfeld preferred not to reveal the personal details of this person, writing mainly about the Potocki family in general.\u00a0Only in 2018, when the book by Urszula Glensk The Hirszfelds.\u00a0Understanding the blood\u00a0<\/i>was published, this mystery was solved, although until now little is said about it.<\/p>\n
The savior turned out to be a Warsaw pharmacist Konstanty Potocki (1886-1967).\u00a0Before the war, he was a wholesaler, pharmaceutical industrialist and co-organizer of the pharmaceutical production plant “Dr farm K. Wende.\u00a0Industrial and Commercial Plants Ltd\u201d.\u00a0His pharmacy was located at Krakowskie Przedmie\u015bcie 45 Street, and from 1943 on Aleje Jerozolimskie Street in Warsaw.\u00a0Potocki, with his own money, led Hirszfeld out of the Warsaw ghetto in July 1942, when the mass deportation of Jews to Treblinka was initialized.\u00a0Personally, it was engineer D., a figure unknown today, who came to the ghetto for him and announced that there was a car waiting on the Aryan side.\u00a0Grateful for the offer, Hirszfeld wrote in his memoirs: \u201cMy cordial love for young people evidently lived in the memory of this kind man.\u00a0I accept the offer with the deepest emotion”.\u00a0The Hirszfeld family left the ghetto disguised as workers.<\/p>\n
Potocki was a Protestant, he rests in the Evangelical-Augsburg Cemetery.\u00a0He did not receive the title of “Righteous Among the Nations”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“The lecturer’s hawk eye fell on my blue bows in my hair and I hear the question.\u00a0 Can my friend in blue ribbons remind me of what I talked about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history"],"yoast_head":"\n