On the 12th of May they recorded 114 cases of typhus, on the 13th there were 170 new cases. By the 15th of May, the number of victims had reached 200. These figures show the number of typhus cases that appeared after releasing the inmates of Terezin, a former concentration camp located near Prague, in the spring of 1945. It was one of the last Nazi death camps to be liberated.
Hundreds of thousands of people left the world through the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. This was not the case at Terezin. Immediately after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the fascist authorities created a ghetto to cover up their crimes, a sort of “fig leaf” of the Nazi's racist policy. Nobody was openly burned, no ashes were scattered in this “model” camp. Heinrich Himmler’s department allowed visits for selected journalists and neutral representatives of the Red Cross. A death camp with a human face. It even had its own currency, “Terezins.” But even though it served as a 'public image' of Nazi camps, the camp still witnessed the deaths of over 40,000 inmates, who perished of exhaustion, diseases, and cruel treatment.
In the late April 1945, on the eve of their collapse, the Nazis sent 14,000 more prisoners from other camps, including numerous allied POWs and nearly all the political prisoners that had managed to survive, to Terezin. Tired by the weather and thirst, the haeftlings (prisoners) were filling the concrete cells column after column. Many of them had been purposefully infected with typhus. The epidemic followed suit promptly.
The Soviet soldiers, who liberated the camp, witnessed an appalling picture. Hundreds of diseased were lying unconscious with fever, on the brink of death. The water supply system and sewerage did not function and the place was infested with lice. Those who could stand, were trying to go home to different corners of Europe, from Yugoslavia to France, through Holland and Belgium. In this triumphant world, the Terezin camp was like a bacteriological bomb left by the agonizing Third Reich.
Several hours later, the sanitary-epidemiological laboratory of the First Ukrainian Front (SEL-70) headed by Lieutenant Colonel Denys Kaliuzhny, came to the camp together with its medical subunits. This marked the beginning of the rescue process. Five full-capacity army hospitals were created on the spot. During the first five days over 2,000 people infected with typhus were hospitalized. In the following two weeks, this was followed by another 2,983. At the same time, another 1,160 patients were placed in the hospital, including 68 patients with dysentery and typhoid fever. This data is based on the handwritten report of Lieutenant-Colonel Kaliuzhny.
What kind of man was doctor Kaliuzhny from the farmstead Kaliuzhny in the Sumy region? Denys was born in 1900 to a family of village folk. When he was 15, he entered a zemstvo (local government) medical school in Kharkiv. After graduation he worked as a medical assistant and disinfected the railway junction of the huge transit city. It was there that he was first confronted with epidemics. In 1921 he entered the Kharkiv Medical Institute, working at the Sanitization and Prevention Department. After graduation he worked for five years as a sanitary doctor in what was then the industrial capital of Ukraine. Later he became a postgraduate student at the General Hygiene Department of the Medical Institute in Slobozhanshchyna and a research associate at the Institute of Communal Hygiene in Kharkiv, established by the outstanding hygienist, doctor Oleksandr Marzieiev. Kaliuzhny was among the first researchers who joined the scientific lobby for environmental protection of the Donbas, whose atmosphere was heavily polluted by industrial giants. This was the subject of his candidate’s thesis, which he defended in 1940. He also took part in devising the water supply system of Siversky Donets – Kharkiv.
Even after being recruited in 1937, Kaliuzhny continued his scientific work. He gave lectures on hygiene and epidemiology in the military medical school, which was then established in Kharkiv. During the war he lectured in the Kuibyshev Military Medical Academy. In 1942 he was sent to join the units of the Voronezh Front (which would later become the First Ukrainian Front), where he headed the SEL. In 1946 he returned to his home research institute, which was moved to Kyiv, and in 1956 he succeeded Marzieiev as head of the institute. In 1955 he defended his doctor’s thesis on the problems of air cleansing in hygienic counteraction to the emissions of ferrous metallurgy companies. His research focused on the hygiene of non-defensive buildings like soldier dugouts, medical blocks, and other kinds of shelter, both during a period of calm and during attacks. His first manifesto, on the life of a soldier in field conditions, was not accepted, and he had to repeat his scientific work. It may be that the topics, including those pertaining to breathing and the quality of the atmosphere, which Kaliuzhny covered in his research, were a matter of social welfare. However, during the 16-year period when Kaliuzhny headed Marzeiev’s institute he laid the scientific foundations for many other preventive measures.
In 1975, the department magazine Sanitaria i hihiena (Sanitization and Hygiene) published an article by the USSR Academy of Medical Science (AMS) correspondent member Kaliuzhny, which was dedicated to the Victory’s 30th anniversary and carried a very academic title “Of the History of Combatting Epidemics During the World War II.” In it, he spoke in a very restrained and scholarly manner about what was going on in Terezin. Unfortunately, this great worker of war- and peace-time alike died in 1976. The founder of Kyiv’s Medicine Museum, prof. Oleksandr Hrando, came up with the idea to present the echoes of his exploits through a museum exposition, particularly since Kaliuzhny’s deeds were highly esteemed in Czechoslovakia, whose government conferred him the Czechoslovak War Cross 1939-1945. The national order was given for courage, and was bestowed the title of Honorary Member of the Jan Purkyne Medical Society. The author of this article worked in the museum at the time and, with Hrando’s approval, was given the opportunity to touch and examine previously un-known objects.
On a calm morning, I was looking at the certificate of this wondrous award ceremony, signed by Czechoslovakian President Ludvik Svoboda and grazing through other rare documents in the company of Oleksandra Zalohina-Kaliuzhna, the scholarly enthusiast’s spouse and muse since 1925 and his younger daughter, dermatologist Prof. Lidia Kaliuzhna in the appartment of Kaliuzhnys on vul. Saksahanskoho. In 1989 the book Medytsyna v soldatskii shyneli (Medicine in a Soldier’s Overcoat), which also included my essay about Kaliuzhny’s good deeds, was published. I have learned quite recently that Zalohina-Kaliuzhna was immensely touched by those pages and gave this book as a present to prof. Iryna Datsenko, a hygiene expert and Kaliuzhny’s admirer in postwar Lviv. Datsenko mentioned this in her memoirs.
Yet returning to the details of the doctor's exploit. Lidia, who is a careful keeper of the family archive, familiarized me with other realities of the unfinished novel. Among them were the leafs bearing the seal of the Krasnaia zvezda (Red Star) newspaper and carefully pinned together. In 1970, the reporter Taratuta from Krasnaia zvezda, who specialized in the Central Military Group, found Kaliuzhny and asked him to answer a couple of questions.
His letter said, “Dear Denys Mykolaiovych! I have taken your address from the Czechoslovakian historian Vales, who works in the Terezin Museum. He has already shown me a booklet, published by one of Terezin inmates, former political prisoner Drzevo soon after the end of the war. It contains the following lines: ‘Russians, headed by lieutenant-colonels Kaliuzhny and Safronov, with auxiliary personnel from Marshal Konev’s army, provided us with inappreciable help. They organized hospitals in Terezin which helped the infected.’ Could you tell us more about what happened? Is lieutenant-colonel Safronov, or other doctors and nurses who were involved still alive?”
Kaliuzhny’s answer to this letter was as follows: “Before coming to the camp, I was the head of the sanitary-epidemiological laboratory of the First Ukrainian Front. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about Lieut.-Col. Safronov or any other medical employees of the Third Guards Army and sanitary epidemiological lab-70, except for doctor Kyriakova, who currently works in Tajikistan.” Based on other sources, I can affirm that nearly 40 medical workers, who were fighting the disaster, became infected with typhus.
But what response did this self-denying and life-risking work inspire in the hearts of the people? Together with military doctors of Konev’s army the disease was fought by the sanitary epidemiologic detachment of the Czechoslovakian Association of the Red Cross and several other medics, former prisoners. Before Kaliuzhny’s departure, the Czech doctors presented him with a letter of gratitude. Several lines from the letter can be found below:
“You, our rescuers, found us in this difficult situation. You came and took a burden from our shoulders that we could no longer bear. You prepared new hospitals and ensured the sanitization and hospitalization of everyone who needed it. You also organized a sanitary service.
“Now you are leaving us. Other tasks are await you. With gratitude we recognize and wonder at the spirit, which you always demonstrate. We wish you happiness and success in the future.”
Below is another leaflet from those days, which was kept by Kaliuzhny: “Dear doctor Kaliuzhny, as you know, tomorrow the Dutchmen are leaving for their homeland. Before they leave I want to thank you once again on their behalf for your endeavors and energy in fighting the epidemic of typhus, thanks to which we can return home. Respectfully, associate professor Ph.D A. Fedder, University of Amsterdam.”
Together with the academic of the AMS of Ukraine, Kaliuzhny’s student Andrii Serdiuk, current head of the Marzieiev Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology, we delved into the scientific heritage of his teacher.
Serdiuk grew thoughtful, “In his multi-faceted work on hygiene, Kaliuzhny united a range of actual problems of our routine life. These included the battle to make air, water and soil safer for people despite the actions of numerous polluters. He pioneered a new view on oncology and immunological dangers, such as noises and electromagnetic waves. Of course, we have known about his contribution to saving the nearly doomed Terezin. By the way, Kaliuzhny was extremely modest and laconic as he spoke about those days and. But Europe, particularly from the perspective of the new century, should remember about them with gratitude, because the doctor from a small farmstead near Lebedyn, where many people bore the surname of Kaliuzhny, can be called an unknown Hippocrates of our times.”
The multi-storeyed building of the unique institute on Popudrenka street is the brainchild of Prof. Kaliuzhny. Its front is decorated with a huge mosaic panel, where one can see the new dramatic saga, between ecology and man. The core of the life and fate of Terezin’s rescuer, who later became the champion of millions bearing the consequences of ecological elements, suddenly emerges with the energy of talented work, which implies love for man.
