Marian Toliński

How to cite: Hołuj, T. Marian Toliński. Kapera, M., trans. Medical Review – Auschwitz. February 24, 2021. Originally published in Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim. 1964: 121–122.

Author

Tadeusz Hołuj, 1916–1985, poet, writer, journalist, and politician, member of the Union of Armed Struggle and of the resistance movement in Auschwitz-Birkenau (prisoner No. 62937) during the Second World War.

Marian Toliński was not a doctor, yet he showed all those traits of human nature that the general public tends to associate specifically with the medical profession as distinct from other occupations—traits such as eagerness to help other human beings, selflessness and dedication, as well as work in the interest of mankind.

Toliński became and continues to be an epitome of utmost self-sacrifice for the sake of one’s fellows in distress. Sadly, such an attitude was far from common among camp internees, and not even the general rule within the smaller communities of the prisoners’ hospitals.


Marian Toliński. Source: Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1964. Click the image to enlarge.

Marian Toliński was born on 23 March 1915 in Kraków and had strong emotional bonds with that city. He was arrested by the Gestapo already in May 1940 and deported from the Kraków jail to Tarnów, where he was put on the first transport of political prisoners, whose arrival in Auschwitz marked the beginning of the tragic history of the camp.1 Toliński was registered as Number 49 and soon was sent to work in the prisoners’ hospital in Auschwitz I, the camp’s main section.2 First, he found his way there as a patient, but later was engaged as an orderly and a member of the staff of the dispensary in Block 28, and the prisoners’ pharmacy. For a time, he was forced to join the Leichenträgerkommando, whose task was to remove the dead bodies of people shot in Death Block, and to serve in the penal unit that laboured in the notorious Kiesgrube gravel pit. Yet Auschwitz survivors remember him mainly as the head of the pharmacy and diagnostic test laboratory, where he met crowds of prisoners on an everyday basis.

Toliński was a slightly-built modest, calm, and cheerful person, yet turned out to be a man of great fortitude. People knew him for his jovial, well-nigh merry disposition, but never imagined that it covered up his extreme mental exhaustion, as he was deeply perturbed by his experience of the camp. Fully aware of what was going on around him, he saw Auschwitz for what it was. Nonetheless, neither his work in the camp hospital, in the vortex of the oppressive system where prisoners were in incessant danger, nor the worst years of the Nazi reign of terror deprived him of his dignity or rectitude. On the contrary, they made him even more persistent in his efforts to protect the lives and wellbeing of his fellow inmates. Yet, his own mental strength was being constantly and steadily drained.

The underground resistance movement in the camp could always rely on Toliński and was never disappointed. He developed his own ways of fighting the system of extermination: using illicitly procured glucose and calcium and plants supplied by a special unit of herb gatherers, he produced gallons of medicinal solutions, syrups, and cordials. Not only did he make medications, but he also produced bogus results for urine or blood tests to save patients from death at the hands of the SS men.

Toliński achieved perfection as a lab technician and his skills proved absolutely essential at the peak of the typhus epidemic, when he strove to save as many lives as possible. He tucked away medicines and dressings pinched from the SS supplies, for distribution to the needy, or to be sent over to the women’s camp. Also, he collected medications smuggled into the camp by the international resistance movement and stashed them away in the lab. Toliński did not indulge in self-importance and treated all that he did as his regular duty and as the normal thing to do. His help was sought even by SS men, members of the camp personnel, who wanted to treat their STDs on the sly.3 Toliński made use of such windfalls to help the prisoners’ community.

So he was a recognizable figure both to the rank-and-file detainees, whom he always offered kindness, assistance, and a consoling word, and to the members of the camp resistance. Every day he fought indefatigably—because it was a fight—to save lives and to uphold the dignity of a political prisoner.4 In late October 1944 he was transferred to Sachsenhausen in the first evacuation transport.

After the war, Toliński set about working for his country, even though his health had been ruined in the camps. He was employed as a sports journalist for the local daily Echo Krakowa and devoted a lot of his time and energy to community service. He engaged in voluntary work for the Association of Former Political Prisoners,5 and was a sports activist and a secretary in the regional organization supporting students of physical education.6 But his body was unable to cope with the strain. Marian Toliński died in May 1948, to the profound grief of fellow Auschwitz survivors and colleagues.

Time is an inexorable destroyer, wearing away the memory of such people, yet the good that Marian Toliński did in the dreadful years under the Nazi German occupation of Poland should not be allowed to turn into a vague recollection without a personal attribution to his name.

***

Translated from original article: T. Hołuj, “Marian Toliński.” Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1964.


Notes
  1. The first transport of prisoners that the Germans sent to Auschwitz (on 14 June 1940) consisted of 728 Poles who had been held in Tarnów jail and were suspected of involvement in underground resistance activities or simply rounded up in the street. They were sent to work building the camp’s facilities. See https://ipn.gov.pl/pl/pierwszy-transport-do-a/101301,80-rocznica-deportacji-pierwszych-Polakow-do-niemieckiego-nazistowskiego-obozu-A.html and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLIE7Kvzg64.a
  2. Toliński’s registration number is given as 49 in the records preserved in the archives of the Auschwitz?Birkenau State Museum, although some sources give his number as 490. Cf. http://auschwitz.org/gfx/auschwitz/userfiles/_public/2020_news/lista_wiezniow_i_transportu_polakow_do_auschwitz_14_czerwca_1940.pdf.b
  3. SS men discovered to be suffering from an STD were punished by being sent to the Eastern Front.b
  4. Most of the Polish inmates of Auschwitz were registered as political prisoners, while many of the functionaries were Germans with previous convictions for criminal offences. b
  5. Związek Byłych Więźniów Politycznych.b
  6. Komitet Wojewódzki Przyjaciół Studentów WF.b

a—note by Teresa Bałuk-Ulewiczowa, Head Translator for the Medical Review Auschwitz project; b—notes by Marta Kapera, the translator of the text.

      

A publication funded in 2020–2021 within the DIALOG Program of the Ministry of Education and Science in Poland.

We use cookies to ensure you get the best browsing experience on our website. Refer to our Cookies Information and Privacy Policy for more details.