Prof. Franciszek Raszeja

Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim has already published a note describing the death in the Warsaw ghetto of Professor Franciszek Raszeja, a distinguished surgeon from Poznań (Pospieszalski 129). However, no source information has been made public so far concerning his life under the German occupation of Poland and the particulars of the last days of his life, so it is a worthwhile effort to shed light on the matter, using the available documents.¹

Franciszek Raszeja was born on 2 April 1986 in Chełmno. Alojzy Mordawski, a Toruń lawyer, wrote in a letter to me that Raszeja was his school friend and they completed their secondary education in Chełmno before the First World War. During that war, Raszeja was held as a prisoner of war in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.² In March 1917 (February 1917 Old Style), and precisely on the day when the February Revolution started in Russia, Raszeja arrived in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg). Thanks to the help of the Swedish embassy, he managed to cross over to the German-occupied territory of Poland. Having returned home, he had to struggle with severe health problems.

Raszeja began his medical studies in Fribourg, Switzerland and completed them in Poznań. He was a hard-working, gifted student and was awarded excellent grades in all his exams. His only pass grade was from Prof. Stefan Horoszkiewicz³ for the forensic medicine course, and it took him a long time to get over that setback (Mordawski). In 1923 he graduated in Medicine from the University of Poznań and was appointed assistant physician to Prof. Ireneusz Wierzejewski⁴ in the orthopaedic department of the city’s university hospital.⁵ After the death of Prof. Wierzejewski, Dr Raszeja gave lectures to medical students, was head of Swarzędz orthopaedic hospital, and helped to open a new orthopaedic department for Poznań’s university hospital. In 1931 Dr Raszeja earned his post-doctoral habilitation degree from that university and a few years later was appointed Professor Extraordinary and head of the new orthopaedic unit he had helped to establish (some sources give the date of this appointment as 1935 and others as 1936).

Prof. Raszeja was a co-founder and member of the board of the Polish Orthopaedic and Traumatological Society,⁶ and editor of its journal as well as of the quarterly Chirurgia Narządów Ruchu i Ortopedia Polska. He was vice-chair of the Polish Association for the Prevention of Rheumatoid Arthritis⁷ as well as a member of the Poznań Society for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences.⁸ He published 40 scientific books and papers, some in French or German. Prof. Raszeja was active not only in the academic field: he wanted to establish a school for persons with reduced mobility, but the project had to be abandoned when World War II broke out.

As I was informed by Prof. Raszeja’s daughter, Dr Bożena Raszeja-Wanic, when the War broke out, her father was called up, and in early September 1939 he was evacuated with the Polish Army hospital to Kowel (now Kovel, Ukraine). When the military operations were over, he returned to Warsaw. In October 1939, the Germans shot his eldest brother, who was a Roman Catholic seminary professor in Pelplin.

In December 1939 Prof. Raszeja was appointed head of the surgical ward of the Polish Red Cross hospital on Smolna in Warsaw. He set up a thirty-bed orthopaedic ward and trained his assistants. He delivered orthopaedics lectures and classes for medical students attending clandestine courses at the underground University of Warsaw.⁹ He also provided gratuitous surgical procedures for impoverished patients (Mordawski).

Czesław Markiewicz, a soldier wounded in the campaign of September 1939, was admitted to the hospital in December 1939 and was under Raszeja’s care. In 1967 he sent me the following recollection:

Prof. Raszeja immediately turned his attention to the most serious cases, including myself. . . . I remember his tall, athletic, manly figure. His face was always serious and I never saw him smiling, but we could sense he was pleased when he saw a patient was improving. He was dark-eyed, and had dark, thinning hair and strong, large hands. He commanded the respect of all the hospital staff and patients. . . . It was thanks to his care that I survived, didn’t lose my arm and am not disabled.

In Warsaw in the latter half of 1940, eminent representatives of the medical profession established their own, independent clandestine organisation called the Underground Consultative Committee of Democratic and Socialist Physicians¹⁰ (Lucjan Dobroszycki¹¹ in Bartoszewski and Lewinówna). In 1941, with the Committee’s support, Prof. Raszeja opened an outpatient bone and joint TB clinic for the poor in the Warsaw municipal health centre,¹² became its head, and saw patients on a daily basis (Raszeja-Wanic). The Committee was active in the Warsaw ghetto, where the contact person was Dr Kazimierz Polak,¹³ a physician of Jewish origin, Raszeja’s former assistant in the Polish Red Cross hospital, who called the Professor in for consultation whenever the need arose. Prof. Raszeja visited Jewish patients in the ghetto very often, which was dangerous, so he was advised by Dr Henryk Cetkowski¹⁴ to be particularly cautious (Dega). Prof. Raszeja helped the Jewish community in yet another way: he was head of a blood transfusion centre in the ghetto. It was established by Prof. Ludwik Hirszfeld, who had been Raszeja’s tutor, and the blood donors were students of the clandestine Polish educational system (Hirszfeld).

Prof. Raszeja was one of a large group of Polish doctors who took part in a sustained and committed effort to help people in the Warsaw ghetto. “The Polish educated classes, including academics, writers, actors, and artists, as well as representatives of the liberal professions, such as physicians, lawyers, and qualified engineers, made a very substantial contribution to the task of saving the Jewish community” (Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, 67). They were aware of the conditions in the ghetto, where people starved and lived in terribly overcrowded accommodation. We have a number of accounts of the situation, from several witnesses, for instance Prof. Hirszfeld in his court testimony:

Now for the matter of providing food to the Jewish district. One day, I asked the man who collected such data for the Jewish qahal¹⁵ to present the problem to us. The food rations allotted to a Jewish person amounted to 300 calories. 300 calories a day is tantamount to death by starvation. If I remember correctly, the well-off class, that is the qahal officials, had 1,500 calories, that is half of what is needed to survive. I clearly recollect that when I was working in the hospital, every day I saw people dying of hunger. And when I was compiling the statistics and wanted to compare the death rates for the typhus patients and the general population, the difference was so huge that there was only one factor to account for it: people were dying of starvation.

There is a detailed account of the situation from another reliable witness who came to the ghetto on a daily basis. Tadeusz Bednarczyk¹⁶ was a major in the Polish reserve forces and plenipotentiary of the Polish resistance movement, one of the co-founders of the Jewish Military Union,¹⁷ which was established in late 1939. He sent me a letter with the following information:

In mid-July 1942, the month Prof. Raszeja died, everyday life in the Jewish ghetto looked normal enough. Traders and craftsmen went about their business, but impoverishment had been manifest ever since the spring of that year. Crowds of beggars, adults and children, stood in front of the court building on Leszno, wailing and persistently calling out for alms or—alternatively—dying in the street, lethargic waifs emaciated or swollen by hunger. Vast multitudes of people thronged the street. Ethnic Poles used the building to sneak into the ghetto . . . and smuggle humanitarian aid.¹⁸ In general, ever since it was walled off and cut off from the world in November 1940, the entire ghetto lived and functioned only due to the sustained assistance from ethnic Poles. I don’t just mean charity donations from individuals, because during the war everybody had become poor (we distributed as many as 50 thousand free portions of thin soup daily to the unemployed inhabitants of Warsaw), and such contributions would not have been of much help. I mean humanitarian aid provided by Polish business people: factory owners, wholesale traders, and skilled craftsmen who co-operated economically with the ghetto either within the Nazi legal system or, more often than not, via the underground channels (for instance for some time they used a specially set up Polish?Jewish division of the Polish Chamber¹⁹ of Industry and Commerce in Warsaw, but the Germans closed it down in the spring of 1941). This commercial exchange brought the ghetto a profit and jobs for the Jewish people, including the educated classes. The Poles . . . risked their lives, although they did not have to, because they could have done business only with Polish contractors. . . . By the end of 1941, when the population of the ghetto was about half a million, as much as 250 metric tons of food are estimated to have been sneaked in every day (this means an extra daily ration of half a kilo²⁰ per person, for instance, 250 grams²¹ of potatoes, 150 grams²² of bread, and 100 grams²³ of fat, sugar, and jam, which gives about 1,200 calories). If we include industrial materials and other products, the daily volume of contraband goods is estimated at 500 metric tons. The death toll of Poles killed while engaged in the procedure went into the thousands; mainly of ordinary smugglers, who usually used primitive methods, such as throwing parcels over the ghetto wall. . . .

Initially, the Warsaw ghetto had to take in as many as 150 thousand Jewish people from the suburban towns. Robbed of their provisions, these new arrivals were absolutely destitute. They had to start earning a living and were unwelcome competitors on an already tight labour market. . . . They were unable to reach out to the Poles for help, because they had no contacts and were not familiar with the local conditions. [It was mainly] these deportees who turned to begging and died in large numbers. . . . The death rate was high and typhus started to spread, but the epidemic was contained by the Jewish health service . . . with substantial aid from the Poles, mainly the Polish Red Cross. Józef Kwasiborski, secretary of its North Warsaw branch, which had the ghetto in its catchment area, was a particularly committed helper. He was also a delegate of the Polish government-in-exile.²⁴

Whenever Prof. Raszeja visited the ghetto for medical consultation prior to 20 July 1942, he could still see “normal” conditions, as described above. His death coincided with the onset of the first phase of the liquidation of the ghetto, which lasted from 22 July to 13 September 1942,²⁵ that is for a month and three weeks. Within that period, the Nazi Germans deported and killed over 300 thousand Jewish people. More round-ups were staged on the “Aryan” side of the ghetto walls, and a few Poles who happened to be in the ghetto at the time were killed along with its Jewish inhabitants (Mark, 99).

On the day when the liquidation of the ghetto started, Dr Polak came to ask Prof. Raszeja for consultation and a surgical operation in the Jewish district, and brought him a pass issued by the German police (Raszeja-Wanic). The officer who issued it advised Prof. Raszeja not to use it to enter the ghetto on that particular day (Dega after Cetkowski), which was either the twenty-first (according to Raszeja-Wanic, Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauki, Sprawa, Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, and Bednarczyk) or the twenty-second of July (according to the Professor’s obituary and Mieczysław Maślanko, a witness in the Ludwig Fischer²⁶ trial).

Nonetheless, Prof. Raszeja went to the ghetto, accompanied by Dr Polak. His patient was Abe Gutnajer,²⁷ a famous Warsaw antiquarian who lived on Chłodna; my sources provide different house numbers: No. 6 (Raszeja-Wanic); No. 9 (Pospieszalski) or No. 26 (Maślanko).When Prof. Raszeja was examining the patient, several SS men stormed into the sickroom. They came from the Lublin branch of the Gestapo, which was under the command of SS Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle (Maślanko and Bednarczyk).²⁸ The incident occurred at about 7 p.m. (Bednarczyk writes that when he was “on Grzybowska near Chłodna,” he heard shots coming from Gutnajer’s flat; in fact the two streets do not cross or adjoin each other).

The tenement house on ul. Chłodna 26 in Warsaw where Prof. Raszeja was murdered. The photo was taken on 1 January 1942. Source: S. Poznański (oprac./edit.), Walka. Śmierć. Pamięć 1939-1945. W dwudziestą rocznicę powstania w warszawskim getcie 1943-1963. Rada Ochrony Pomników Walki i Męczeństwa, Warszawa 1963 (n.p.). Also available in the Wikimedia Commons media repository under the link. Click the image to enlarge.

Seeing the intruders, Prof. Raszeja reached into his pocket for the pass, but the Germans misunderstood the move and shot him on the spot. They also killed the patient and his family, the nurse who was attending the sick man, and Dr Polak, all the people gathered around the sickbed. These facts had to be craftily extracted from German informers by Dr Lewicki, a urologist from the Polish Red Cross hospital, who managed to reconstruct the developments.²⁹ The incident was mentioned at Fischer’s trial, during which Prof. Hirszfeld testified as a witness. The minutes of its fourteenth day read as follows:

Prosecutor Sawicki: “Professor Hirszfeld, you mentioned Professor Raszeja, who was killed in the ghetto. Can you provide any particulars?”

Witness (Prof. Hirszfeld): “Professor Raszeja was called in to see a patient in the ghetto. The relatives, a nurse, and another doctor were in the patient’s room. The SS men arrived and murdered everybody present, including the doctor, the nurse, and the professor.”

Tadeusz Bednarczyk writes that these facts were confirmed by Dr Polak’s widow Babetta³⁰ a few months after the incident. Bednarczyk claims he witnessed the removal of Prof. Raszeja’s body from the ghetto (Dega). On the following day, that is on 22 or 23 July 1942, the German police returned the body and the pass to Prof. Raszeja’s family (Raszeja-Wanic). Apologies were offered to the widow for the “mistake” (Sprawa).

Sprawa, a Polish underground bulletin, printed a brief report on Prof. Raszeja’s death, stating that while Abe Gutnajer was being examined, “the house was surrounded by SS men and Lithuanian Šauliai Riflemen. The tenants were dragged out into the yard to be killed in a mass execution: all of them were sentenced to death, just because a few were involved in smuggling food. Both doctors protested and showed their professional ID cards, but were shot along with the patient.” The Šauliai belonged to a Lithuanian contingent which collaborated with the Nazi Germans. They were commanded by General Povilas Plechovičius, formerly a military instructor for Lietuvos Šauli? Sąjunga, the Lithuanian riflemen’s union. They made a minor contribution to the German campaign to terrorise the people of Warsaw and combat the underground resistance forces. By 1944 the Germans had only a few Šauliai units still in their service in Lithuania. These men burned down the villages of Kiernawa and Gumbas and murdered their inhabitants (Juchniewicz).

A few details were added to the description of the Gutnajer killings by a witness named Maślanko, who testified on the eighth day of the Fischer trial:

On 22 July, Sturmbannführer Höfle and his men arrived at the headquarters of the Judenrat³¹ and arrested at least half of the council members. They were taken hostage and transported to the Pawiak jail.³² At the same time, SS troops entered the ghetto, searching for prominente Juden, as they said. Over 100 people were arrested on Chłodna and immediately sent over to the Pawiak. Some were killed on the spot, for instance, in a Chłodna yard the Nazis shot Fabian Zilber, aged seventy-five, father of the lawyer Wacław Zilber.³³ In one of the flats at No. 26 a medical consultation was being conducted by Prof. Raszeja, a distinguished medical specialist. The unit that was making arrests on Chłodna burst in and, as far as I know, all the people present were killed, or maybe some of them were arrested. Höfle and his men left the Judenrat, offering no explanation or reason for the incursion.

As I have said above, the apparently “normal” life in the ghetto was over by the end of July 1942, but it was still possible for Abe Gutnajer to call in Prof. Raszeja, a renowned physician. Bednarczyk writes the following on the SS raid by the unit which entered the ghetto on 20 July:

The Gestapo was greedy for money and had flunkeys who sniffed out well-off people who could be robbed. And probably that is why they paid a visit to Gutnajer. . . . When their expectations were frustrated, because the victim was ill and surrounded by witnesses, they shot them all.³⁴

The anonymous obituary of Franciszek Raszeja offers a different opinion:

Prof. Raszeja was well known in Germany. It is hard to imagine that his death was accidental, especially as the German authorities knew he intended to visit the ghetto.

One of the issues of Abecadło Lekarskie, an underground paper published by the Consultative Committee of Democratic and Socialist Physicians from late 1940 to the spring of 1944, carried a meaningful obituary note quoted by Lucjan Dobroszycki in his account for Bartoszewski and Lewinówna:

Professor Franciszek Raszeja died a soldier’s death, doing his duty, on 21 July 1942. All the effort and hard work this eminent scientist put in for the common good earned him the respect of the academic world, his colleagues, and his patients. He was a popular figure in different milieus. . . . He died doing a doctor’s job, while helping a Jewish man, humiliated and persecuted within the ghetto walls. Professor Raszeja’s death in the course of duty makes him a perfect symbol of humanitarianism, an attitude which is rare nowadays and which defies the laws of the barbarians, because it urges a doctor to help every person in need of medical assistance.

***

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all who gave me information about Prof. Raszeja’s life and death, namely his daughter Dr Bożena Raszeja-Wanic, Prof. Wiktor Dega, Tadeusz Bednarczyk, Alojzy Mordawski, and Czesław Markiewicz; as well to the Chief Commission for the Prosecution of Nazi German Crimes in Poland, which provided me with transcripts from the records of the trial of Ludwig Fischer, governor of the Warsaw district of the Generalgouvernement, and to the Institute of Information Studies of the National Library for transcripts from the bulletin Sprawa.

***

Translated from original article: M. Dominik. “Prof. Franciszek Raszeja.” Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1969.

Notes

1. Not all of the details in this biography agree with what later sources say, cf. http://muzeum.ump.edu.pl/wystawa-raszeja and https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciszek_Paweł_Raszeja.^a
2. During the First World War Raszeja, who was an inhabitant of the German zone of partitioned Poland, was drafted into the German army. He fought on the eastern front, was taken prisoner by the Russians, and held in Tashkent. Source: Gąsiorowski, Antoni, 1983, Wielkopolski słownik biograficzny, Warszawa and Poznań: PWN.^b
3. Stefan Horoszkiewicz (1874–1945), a Polish forensic pathologist, professor of the University of Poznań.^b
4. Ireneusz Wierzejewski (1881–1930), Polish orthopaedist, professor of the University of Poznań, senator, brigadier general of the Polish Army. Graduated n Medicine from Munich University in 1908. Chief physician in the Polish insurgent forces during the 1918–1919 Greater Polish Uprising against the Germans. In 1921 he established Poland’s first orthopaedic clinic at the Medical Faculty of the University of Poznań. Source: Stawecki, Piotr, 1994, Słownik biograficzny generałów Wojska Polskiego 1918–1939, Warszawa: Bellona.^b
5. Klinika Ortopedyczna Uniwersytetu Poznańskiego.^a
6. Polskie Towarzystwo Ortopedyczne i Traumatologiczne, founded in 1928 by Ireneusz Wierzejewski, Michał Grobelski, Henryk Cetkowski, Franciszek Raszeja, and Wiktor Dega. Source: the Society’s website, http://web.archive.org/web/20161031134638/http://ptoitr.pl/towarzystwo/historia-ptoitr.html.^b
7. Polskie Towarzystwo Zwalczania Gośćca.^a
8. Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauki.^a
9. When Germany invaded Poland, one of the first things the occupying power did was to close down all the country’s universities, colleges, and secondary schools, deport teachers and academic staff to concentration camps, and implement a policy of keeping the Polish population uneducated. To thwart German intentions, Polish educationalists set up an underground network of schools and universities, holding classes in secret in private homes.^c
10. Tajny Komitet Porozumiewawczy Lekarzy Demokratów i Socjalistów, est. in Warsaw in late 1940. Its main aims were to organise resistance in the medical circles against the German regulations, counteract Nazi German propaganda, collect evidence of the Nazis’ criminal practices in the health services on occupied Polish territories, and initiate discussion about the national health service in Poland after the war. The Committee provided illicit medical care to those who were wounded in anti-Nazi military operations, sheltered Jews, and offered medical services to the inhabitants of the ghetto. Source: Bartoszewski, Władysław, and Lewinówna, Zofia, eds., 1966, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej: Polacy z pomocą Żydom 1939–1945, Kraków: Znak.^a
11. Lucjan Dobroszycki (1925–1995), Polish historian with Jewish roots, Auschwitz survivor, emigrated to the USA in 1970. Specialised in the history of Polish–Jewish relations.^c
12. Poradnia Gruźlicy Kostno?Stawowej w Ośrodku Zdrowia i Opieki Miasta Warszawy.^a
13. Cieślińska-Lobkowicz (263) writes that in some sources the name is spelled “Pollak.”^c
14. Henryk Cetkowski (1883–1955), Polish surgeon. In 1942, after Prof. Raszeja’s death, he became head of the orthopaedic ward of the Polish Red Cross hospital on Smolna in Warsaw. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising he was commandant of that hospital, and when it was evacuated, he headed a first aid base at Pierackiego 3/5. In the early days of September, he was evacuated with other wounded insurgents to Szpital Wolski, a hospital in the district of Wola. Source: www.1944.pl.^b
15. Qahal (Hebrew, “assembly”)—a council of elders in a Jewish community, especially in Central and Eastern Europe.^c
16. Tadeusz Bednarczyk aka Bednarz (1913–2002), Polish social activist holding Catholic and nationalist views. Served during the war in the military resistance, first in OW-KB (the Security Cadre of the Military Organisation) and later in the AK (Home Army).^b
17. Żydowski Związek Wojskowy.^a
18. The courthouse was at No. 53–55, ul. Leszno (pre-war address; now al. Solidarności 127), on a street that ran along the wall of the ghetto. You could get into the ghetto from the “Aryan” side unnoticed through the building’s front entrance and leave via a back door and a secret entrance into the ghetto. See maps of the ghetto area, e.g. at http://elektronik.bytom.pl/nie-bylo-zadnej-nadziei-powstanie-w-getcie-warszawskim-1943 (with today’s street names).^c
19. Polska Izba Przemysłowo?Handlowa w Warszawie.^c
20. 1 lb. 2 oz.^c
21. 9 oz.^c
22. 6 oz.^c
23. 3.5 oz.^c
24. The Polish government went into exile when Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939, and operated first from France and then (from June 1940) from London. It set up an administrative “underground Polish state” operating at home through a network of plenipotentiary officers known as “delegates.”^c
25. In fact the operation known as Grossaktion Warschau (the closure of the ghetto) continued until 21 September.^a
26. Ludwig Fischer (1905–1947), German war criminal. A lawyer by profession and governor of Distrikt Warschau des Generalgouvernements (the Warsaw district of the part of German-occupied Poland not directly incorporated in the Third Reich). Fischer organised and implemented the reign of terror that affected the inhabitants of Warsaw, Jews and non-Jews alike. He established and later “closed down” the Warsaw ghetto. After the 1944 Uprising, he took part in the campaign to plunder and raze the city to the ground. After the War he was tried by the Polish Supreme Tribunal, found guilty, sentenced to death, and hanged.^b
27. Abe (Abel) Gutnajer (1888–1942), Polish art dealer of Jewish origin, one of the most distinguished antiquarians in prewar Poland. Held auctions and exhibitions of Polish paintings.^b
28. SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Julius Höfle (1911–1962), Austrian war criminal. One of the officers commanding Aktion Reinhard, deporting the Polish Jews to death camps. After the War, he was arrested twice: in 1947 (and released) and in 1961. Hanged himself before his trial began.^b
29. Cieślińska-Lobkowicz gives several versions of the events, as related by different persons and in different sources.^c
30. Also in Cieślińska-Lobkowicz, 264.^c
31. The Judenrat (German for “Jewish Council”) was the entity officially appointed by the Nazi German occupying authorities to administer the ghettoes in occupied Poland on a day-to-day basis. For a basic bibliography, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenrat.^c
32. The Pawiak was a jail on Dzielna in Warsaw. Built in 1830–1835, it had a men’s and a women’s section. During World War II it was the largest penitentiary for political prisoners in occupied Poland. Destroyed by the Germans in August 1944 during the Warsaw Rising. Source: Wanat, Leon, 1960, Za murami Pawiaka, Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza.^b
33. Wilhelm (Wacław) Zilber, See Holocaust and Victims Database, No. 2832, online at https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_advance_search.php.^c
34. Cieślińska-Lobkowicz (264) reiterates Bednarczyk’s explanation of why the SS came to Gutnajer’s flat.^c

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