Weigl Rudolf

Weigl Rudolf Before the war, Rudolf Weigl had been a professor of biology at the University of Lwów (today L’viv). A renowned scientist and famed for developing an important vaccine against typhus, he took a deeply humanistic approach to life and abhorred racism. He protested vigorously against the anti-Semitism and violence of Polish students against their Jewish classmates, branding them barbarians. Rudolf had also been friends with Jewish scientists, and during the period of occupation, while working for the German army, tried to employ some of them in an attempt to protect them. As Rudolf was of German extraction, the German authorities pressed him to accept German ethnic (Volksdeutsche) status, but he refused. On his own initiative, Rudolf organized the smuggling of large quantities of the anti-typhus vaccine from distant Lwów to the Warsaw ghetto, thereby saving many of the inhabitants from the disease. He also gave shelter to a number of Jewish scientists in his institute. Among these were the well-known mathematician, Bronisław Knaster Lilienfeld, and the biologists, Henryk Meisel and his wife, Paula Meisel. For the Meisels’ daughter, Felicja Meisel Mikołajczyk, he found refuge in the botanical garden of the University of Lwów. On January 29, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Rudolf Weigl as Righteous Among the Nations. File:9898