Col. Michał Dobulewicz

For the whole of his life Col. Michał Dobulewicz was a modest man, and as befits a serious thinker and a physician who understood the importance of his vocation, he was not boastful and avoided all manner of publicity, so not surprisingly, he earned an enduring place in the memory of his patients in pre-war Łódź and post-war Pabianice. For many years he brought relief and help to the suffering of these two cities. They still remember his slightly stooping figure and warm, benevolent look over his glasses. For 57 years he worked as a general practitioner and was held in esteem as an excellent surgeon.

He was born on 4 October 1884 into a peasant family in Michaliszki, a small place in the Suwałki region. He lost his father early and had to earn his living on his own. He supported himself and paid for his education by private tutoring. He also helped his younger brothers. He obtained his grammar school-leaving certificate in Mariampol, Lithuania, and straight after leaving school applied to a university to read medicine but was not admitted. He spent a year at the Warsaw Main School;¹ then he studied law in Saint Petersburg for a year or two. It was not until 1907, when he was 23, that he was admitted to the Medical and Surgical Academy in Saint Petersburg and attended lectures delivered by eminent scientists such as the physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov.²

He graduated from the Academy with honours in 1912, thanks to which he was admitted to the competitive examination for an assistant’s appointment. He was successful and became an assistant in the surgery clinic of Prof. Fedorov,³ under whose supervision he worked until the outbreak of the First World War.

Throughout the war he served as a surgeon in the medical company of the 67th infantry division of the Russian army. When the October Revolution broke out, he was in Kiev, seriously ill with typhoid fever. On recovering, he returned to Poland at the earliest opportunity. For a short time he worked as an assistant at the Department of Descriptive Anatomy of the University of Warsaw under the guidance of Prof. Edward Loth.⁴ Dr Dobulewicz was called up to the army⁵ and had to leave his university employment, which must have had a decisive impact on his further life.

Until 1922 he worked as a surgeon in a field hospital, subsequently he was commissioned to serve in Łódź,⁶ in the surgical ward run by Prof. Manteuffel⁷ (uncle of Prof. Leon Manteuffel⁸). When Prof. Manteuffel left, Dr Dobulewicz was appointed head of the ward, held the post until the end of September 1939, and was promoted to successive ranks, finally to colonel in March 1938.

His knowledge and experience were not used in the September campaign.⁹ He was appointed commanding officer of an evacuation hospital which never started operations. When combat finished, he was in Równe.¹⁰ He and several other doctors undertook the difficult journey back to Warsaw, where he was lucky to find his family, wife and two children. On 1 November 1939, he started working at Ujazdowski Hospital,¹¹ a military institution for wounded and sick Polish soldiers.

The history of this hospital and the part it played in the underground resistance has already been described many times; at this point it is enough to say that Col. Dobulewicz’s Surgical Department VI-A, which had two hundred beds, treated the most serious casualties. Dr Dobulewicz’s profound knowledge, experience and management skills let him overcome the chaos in the hospital and start work as soon as possible. Once the situation of the medical and nursing staff was stable, the hospital could start training medical students,¹² many of whom were employed in fictitious jobs.

In January 1940, Prof. Jan Krotoski¹³ joined the staff, which reinforced the ward and allowed it to become a high quality scientific facility. Perhaps it was in this unit that Dr Dobulewicz could pursue his scientific ambition, at least in part.

In 1942, a unit for Soviet POWs¹⁴ was established on the premises of Ujazdowski Hospital. Dr Dobulewicz volunteered to manage this ward, and he and his assistants worked in the ward until it was closed.

In 1943, there was a significant fall in the number of Polish veterans who were patients, and the German occupying authorities reorganised part of the hospital for their own use. Dr Dobulewicz was transferred to work in a hospital in Pruszków. He was there when the Warsaw Uprising broke out, which separated him from his family. It was a painful experience, although there was no time for brooding, because there was a rising number of patients to attend to. Only after a few months did he learn that his son Jerzy had died a soldier’s death.

During the tragic exodus¹⁵ of the inhabitants of Warsaw, for whom internment in Pruszków was the first stop on their sad itinerary, Dr Dobulewicz and his co-workers helped those in need and made it easier for many of them to escape.

On 1 April 1945, he volunteered for the Polish People’s Army¹⁶ and was appointed head of the surgical ward of the Warsaw regional hospital¹⁷ during its post–war restoration. Dobulewicz found the ward completely devastated, but by the time he was demobilised on 20 October 1945, it was working efficiently.

Next, he worked for a short time in Toruń, at the Polish Red Cross Hospital for Polish soldiers released from German POW camps; followed by an equally short stay in Poznań. But Dr Dobulewicz longed to work in his former, pre-war milieu. After the death of Dr Dengel in Łódź, Prof. Tomaszewicz,¹⁸ who was organising the Faculty of Medicine there, put forward Dr Dobulewicz’s name for the chair of surgery, but presumably housing difficulties must have prevented him from accepting this attractive offer.

After working in Zgierz for several months, Dr Dobulewicz settled in Pabianice, where he ran a surgical ward until 1964, also working in an outpatient clinic. For the first years of the clinic’s existence he was the only surgeon working there, and since he lived in the hospital (at the age of 80!), he continued to treat patients, working full-time in the outpatient surgical clinic. He worked there till1 August 1969, when a serious illness made him an invalid. He spent the last months of his life with his daughter Anna, a recognised radiologist, on the coast in Sopot.

He died in December 1970, at the age of 86. Those who knew him recall him as a charming, kind man, an excellent surgeon and doctor, always caring for his patients.

***

This potted biography of Col. Dobulewicz is based on my own recollections and notes, and on information from Dr Anna Dobulewicz-Zielińska.

***

Translated from original article: Bayer, S., “Płk dr med. Michał Dobulewicz.” Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1977.

Notes

1. Warsaw Main School (Szkoła Główna Warszawska), with Polish as the language of instruction, operated in 1862–1869 as the only institution of higher education in the Polish territories under Russian rule following Poland’s loss of independence and partitioning in the late 18th century. The Main School was a successor to the legacy of the University of Warsaw, which the Russians closed down in 1831. https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szko%C5%82a_G%C5%82%C3%B3wna_Warszawska^a
2. Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936), Russian physiologist, known primarily for his work in classical conditioning. Winner of the Nobel Prize of Physiology or Medicine in 1904. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov^b
3. The name is misprinted in the original Polish text. In 1903-1936 one of the Academy’s professors was Sergey Petrovich Fedorov, the founder of the largest national school of surgery and the “father of Russian urology.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Fyodorov_(surgeon)^a
4. Edward Karol Loth (1884–1944), Polish anatomist, anthropologist and eugenicist, doctor of medicine and philosophy, one of the restorers and professors of the University of Warsaw, correspondent member of the Polish Academy of the Arts and Sciences and the Finnish Academy of Sciences, colonel of the Polish Army. Active in the Polish resistance movement during World War II; killed in a Luftwaffe bombing raid. https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Loth^b
5. The Polish article does not give the circumstances of Dr. Dobulewicz’s mobilisation, but it may be inferred from the chronology that he was called up for service in the Polish–Bolshevik War of 1919–1920. The article was published in People’s Poland under the Communist regime, and any mention of the fact that the Bolsheviks invaded Poland would have been censored.^c
6. He was commissioned to serve in 4. Szpital Okręgowy im. gen dyw. dra Felicjana Sławoja Składkowskiego (Gen. Dr Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski 4th district hospital).^b
7. Col. Józefa Manteuffla, MD, was the commandant of the hospital mentioned in the text in 1921-1927.^b
8. Leon Manteuffel-Szoege (1904 -1973), Polish surgeon. Worked in the resistance movement during World War II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Manteuffel-Szoege^a
9. When Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland (on 1 and 17 September 1939 respectively), the Poles fought a defence campaign which lasted until early October. Substantial numbers of military personnel moved to the east of the country, until they were blocked by the Soviet invasion.^c
10. Now Rivne, Ukraine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivne^a
11. Szpital Ujazdowski w Warszawie, the oldest and largest military hospital in Poland, established around 1792. https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szpital_Ujazdowski_w_Warszawie^b
12. In line with their racist policy, the German authorities occupying Poland closed down all the country’s universities, colleges, and secondary schools. Polish educationalists set up a system of secret university and grammar school education. Ujazdowski Hospital was the teaching hospital for the Polish medical cadets’ college, and under German occupation it participated in the secret university teaching programme for medical students.^c
13. Jan Krotoski (1895–1969), physician and senior officer of the Polish Army. Veteran of the Polish–Bolshevik War of 1919–1920, both World Wars, and the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. After the War rector (head) of the Poznań College of Physical Education (now Poznań University of Physical Education, Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego im. Eugeniusza Piaseckiego w Poznaniu). https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Krotoski^b
14. Under German occupation, Ujazdowski Hospital was subject to the occupying authorities, so the decision to send Soviet POWs there was made by the German military.^c
15. During the Uprising and after its fall (September – October 1944), the Germans evicted some 650 thousand civilian inhabitants of Warsaw and forcibly drove them out of the city, sending them to provisional camps (such as Pruszków) or concentration camps, or to Germany for slave labour. They then proceeded to demolish the entire left-bank city. https://dzieje.pl/aktualnosci/exodus-mieszkancow-warszawy-po-powstaniu^c
16. Ludowe Wojsko Polskie, the Communist–controlled armed forces of the People’s Republic of Poland.^c
17. Szpital Okręgowy w Warszawie.^c
18. Wincenty Tomaszewicz (1876–1965), Polish surgeon. During the Second World war the Germans arrested him and held him as a hostage. After the War, Dr Tomaszewicz was one of the founders of the University of Łódź and the Łódź Medical Academy (now the Medical University of Łódź, Uniwersytet Medyczny w Łodzi).^b

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