de Léobardy Joseph

De Léobardy, Joseph File 1823 Professor Joseph de Léobardy directed the medical school and was chief physician at the hospital in Limoges. In the 1920s, he was the first physician in France to treat collapsed lungs, and he published studies on silicosis, an illness that he had placed in the catalogue of work-related injuries. During the Second World War, although it was forbidden to hire Jews under the Vichy race laws, Léobardy employed Jewish physicians in his clinic and employed many Jewish students in his medical school so that they could continue their studies. Two physicians who owe their lives to Léobardy are Dr. Marcel Leibovici, a Romanian Jew, and Dr. Marschutz, a German Jew. Professor Léobardy flouted the law by hiring Leibovici as an assistant in his department. He treated Leibovici superbly and invited him to substitute for a sick doctor in another hospital in the département. One day, Gestapo agents, on an informer’s tip, came to the hospital looking for Leibovici. Léobardy sent someone to warn Leibovici to go into hiding. Although he himself was threatened, he refused to betray him. Dr. Marschutz, former director of the Jewish hospital in Munich, was arrested before leaving Germany and interned in Dachau, from which he managed to escape. Despite his wounds, he reached France and Léobardy’s hospital. Léobardy enabled him to set up a small laboratory in his clinic and paid him decently. In 1942, Marschutz was again arrested and imprisoned, this time in the camp at Nexon near Limoges. Léobardy, with the help of police inspector Noltz, arranged his release. Marschutz, seriously ill, spent four months bedridden at home. Léobardy then admitted him to the hospital, where he lay for two months until he died. Léobardy personally paid part of Marschutz’s hospital bills that were not covered by social insurance, and refused his widow’s offers of reimbursement. On May 11, 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Professor Joseph de Léobardy as Righteous Among theNations.