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The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis
Few diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmitted by body lice, it afflicts the dispossessed—refugees, soldiers, and ghettoized peoples—causing hallucinations, terrible headaches, boiling fever, and often death. The disease plagued the German army on the Eastern Front and left the Reich desperate for a vaccine. For this they turned to the brilliant and eccentric Polish zoologist Rudolf Weigl.
In the 1920s, Weigl had created the first typhus vaccine using a method as bold as it was dangerous for its use of living human subjects. The astonishing success of Weigl’s techniques attracted the attention and admiration of the world—giving him cover during the Nazi’s violent occupation of Lviv. His lab soon flourished as a hotbed of resistance. Weigl hired otherwise doomed mathematicians, writers, doctors, and other thinkers, protecting them from atrocity. The team engaged in a sabotage campaign by sending illegal doses of the vaccine into the Polish ghettos while shipping gallons of the weakened serum to the Wehrmacht.
Among the scientists saved by Weigl, who was a Christian, was a gifted Jewish immunologist named Ludwik Fleck. Condemned to Buchenwald and pressured to re-create the typhus vaccine under the direction of a sadistic Nazi doctor, Erwin Ding-Schuler, Fleck had to make an awful choice between his scientific ideals or the truth of his conscience. In risking his life to carry out a dramatic subterfuge to vaccinate the camp’s most endangered prisoners, Fleck performed an act of great heroism.
Drawing on extensive research and interviews with survivors, Arthur Allen tells the harrowing story of two brave scientists—a Christian and a Jew— who put their expertise to the best possible use, at the highest personal danger.
In the 1920s, Weigl had created the first typhus vaccine using a method as bold as it was dangerous for its use of living human subjects. The astonishing success of Weigl’s techniques attracted the attention and admiration of the world—giving him cover during the Nazi’s violent occupation of Lviv. His lab soon flourished as a hotbed of resistance. Weigl hired otherwise doomed mathematicians, writers, doctors, and other thinkers, protecting them from atrocity. The team engaged in a sabotage campaign by sending illegal doses of the vaccine into the Polish ghettos while shipping gallons of the weakened serum to the Wehrmacht.
Among the scientists saved by Weigl, who was a Christian, was a gifted Jewish immunologist named Ludwik Fleck. Condemned to Buchenwald and pressured to re-create the typhus vaccine under the direction of a sadistic Nazi doctor, Erwin Ding-Schuler, Fleck had to make an awful choice between his scientific ideals or the truth of his conscience. In risking his life to carry out a dramatic subterfuge to vaccinate the camp’s most endangered prisoners, Fleck performed an act of great heroism.
Drawing on extensive research and interviews with survivors, Arthur Allen tells the harrowing story of two brave scientists—a Christian and a Jew— who put their expertise to the best possible use, at the highest personal danger.
402 pages, Paperback
First published July 21, 2014
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About the author
Arthur Allen
17 books10 followersArthur Allen, a former Associated Press foreign correspondent, has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and Salon. He lives in Washington, D.C., where he is an editor and writer for POLITICO.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
November 30, 2020
I misunderstood what the book by Arthur Allen was about because the title, 'The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis', explains one aspect of what the book covers.
The two scientists, Rudolf Stefan Weigl and Ludwik Fleck, were genuine researchers, and their passion was figuring out how Typhus was spread, what caused the disease, and what could cure it and if a vaccine could be invented to prevent it. They were doing excellent work in Weigl's laboratory in Lwów, Poland, which is explained. It is fascinating history, if a little grotesque. After all, lice are the transmitting vector of Typhus. It turns out Typhus is difficult to keep alive and difficult to reproduce in the lab, especially in 1921 when almost nothing was known about Typhus.
But then the Russians happened and next the Nazis happened. Both of these authoritarian countries invaded Poland in turn and changed Poland into a hunting preserve - in the case of the Russians, they went after intellectuals and Polish soldiers; in the case of the Nazis, they went after Jews, Russians, Polish scientists and intellectuals, the Roma and various other folks deemed dangerous, non-Aryan, or degenerate.
Sensitive readers will not like this book. I did not know 'The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl’ would also be about the Nazi concentration camps of World War II.
People were captured, tortured and butchered like cattle in Nazi concentration camps. Like cattle, the Nazis sometimes used dead human bodies to make useful items like wallets from human skin which was not harmed by immediately being burned up or gassed. This is detailed in the book along with other horrors of the concentration camps. So are many many many other atrocities, in detail, but not salaciously. It's just the facts.
World War I focused the attention of many people on Typhus. Soldiers died from it. Battles were lost because of it. The book goes into a complete history of how destructive Typhus was during both World Wars. During this time, scientists like Weigl began to study it, and universities funded the research. Students, of which Fleck was one, worked in Weigl's lab on the disease. They were making progress until first the Russians (not as awful as they were in their second invasion of Poland), and then the Nazis took charge of management of the city of Lwów.
Many of the scientists working on Typhus were Jews. Most died from the brutalities of two wars (especially World War II), and of the Nazi cleansing program of all non-Aryan humans. Some non-Aryans were recruited by the Nazis to work on Typhus. In the crazyland environment that was created by the Nazis, recruitment meant that in belatedly realizing their German pureblood soldiers were being killed by Typhus, they needed to reluctantly save the Jewish and Polish scientists that they had sent to ultimately be burned up in the concentration camp ovens - at least those who hadn't yet died from starvation, exposure, torture and sickness.
Of course, the Nazis in charge of the camps were good at torturing and sadism and murder, not in understanding science, or why Typhus research was important to the high-command Germans. It was above their pay grade. The regular ordinary Germans believed Typhus was a product of the Jewish race, like Jewish children. Kill the Jews and Typhus would go away in their thinking. However, those Germans who were also scientists knew Typhus came with lice, and lice took hold wherever there was no water for showers or washing clothes. Such as places similar to the war fronts where soldiers were fighting enemies. Like in the ghettos the Jews were forced into at the beginning of Nazi invasions of a country. Scientists farmed lice from the people in the ghettos as a result.
Like I said, the facts, which are proven documented history, in this book are grotesque.
Concentration camp scientists were given resources and a little bit more food to do the work in a prisoner Block outfitted with stolen lab equipment from the countries Germany invaded. The book goes into excruciating graphic descriptions of how the Nazis transformed what had been legitimate areas of science and research into scenes of bestiality, depravity and worst of all in terms of actual legitimate scientific results, nonsense research despite topgrade equipment. The Nazis were erratic in their support, the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. Plus, the Nazis in charge were intellectually deficient in the norms of scientific knowledge, including those who were ordinary doctors or scientist specialists in other lines of research, but who had been put in charge of scientists studying Ricettsial bacteria.
Some of the anecdotes in this book would be hilarious if ultimately the consequences to the survivors weren't so horrific or that the stories were all true and not dark jokes.
The author also relates what happened in other concentration-camp labs that were doing inhuman ‘experiments’, I use the word reluctantly, by sadistic Nazi doctors and scientists on camp prisoners.
Eventually the Russians and the Allies found the camps, and the Nazi Germans, some few of them, faced courts of law and punishment. The scientists who had survived moved on. Unfortunately most did not go on to make amazing discoveries about Typhus, but their early work before World War II helped.
The book describes a lot of early important Typhus history, research, and about the researchers in Lwów before the war and what happened to some of them in Nazi custody. While not intensely interesting to read about, actually, because of their numbers (a lot of names are named!) they left behind journals or trial testimony, or interviews, parts of which contained pertinent historical information which the author used as source material.
There is a large Notes section and an index.
One significant research technique which was awesomely terrible, even if legitimate, was the use of human volunteers (which saved lives once the Nazis invaded) as intentional food for lice in the laboratory. Multiple boxes, with one side a mesh wall, full of lice, were strapped to the legs of volunteers. The lice fed on the blood in peoples’s legs. Sometimes the lice were infected with Typhus (they were attached to people who had survived Typhus or had been given a vaccine of sorts to test). The people often got anemia, but that was preferable to the camp ovens or a shooting squad.
The two scientists, Rudolf Stefan Weigl and Ludwik Fleck, were genuine researchers, and their passion was figuring out how Typhus was spread, what caused the disease, and what could cure it and if a vaccine could be invented to prevent it. They were doing excellent work in Weigl's laboratory in Lwów, Poland, which is explained. It is fascinating history, if a little grotesque. After all, lice are the transmitting vector of Typhus. It turns out Typhus is difficult to keep alive and difficult to reproduce in the lab, especially in 1921 when almost nothing was known about Typhus.
But then the Russians happened and next the Nazis happened. Both of these authoritarian countries invaded Poland in turn and changed Poland into a hunting preserve - in the case of the Russians, they went after intellectuals and Polish soldiers; in the case of the Nazis, they went after Jews, Russians, Polish scientists and intellectuals, the Roma and various other folks deemed dangerous, non-Aryan, or degenerate.
Sensitive readers will not like this book. I did not know 'The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl’ would also be about the Nazi concentration camps of World War II.
People were captured, tortured and butchered like cattle in Nazi concentration camps. Like cattle, the Nazis sometimes used dead human bodies to make useful items like wallets from human skin which was not harmed by immediately being burned up or gassed. This is detailed in the book along with other horrors of the concentration camps. So are many many many other atrocities, in detail, but not salaciously. It's just the facts.
World War I focused the attention of many people on Typhus. Soldiers died from it. Battles were lost because of it. The book goes into a complete history of how destructive Typhus was during both World Wars. During this time, scientists like Weigl began to study it, and universities funded the research. Students, of which Fleck was one, worked in Weigl's lab on the disease. They were making progress until first the Russians (not as awful as they were in their second invasion of Poland), and then the Nazis took charge of management of the city of Lwów.
Many of the scientists working on Typhus were Jews. Most died from the brutalities of two wars (especially World War II), and of the Nazi cleansing program of all non-Aryan humans. Some non-Aryans were recruited by the Nazis to work on Typhus. In the crazyland environment that was created by the Nazis, recruitment meant that in belatedly realizing their German pureblood soldiers were being killed by Typhus, they needed to reluctantly save the Jewish and Polish scientists that they had sent to ultimately be burned up in the concentration camp ovens - at least those who hadn't yet died from starvation, exposure, torture and sickness.
Of course, the Nazis in charge of the camps were good at torturing and sadism and murder, not in understanding science, or why Typhus research was important to the high-command Germans. It was above their pay grade. The regular ordinary Germans believed Typhus was a product of the Jewish race, like Jewish children. Kill the Jews and Typhus would go away in their thinking. However, those Germans who were also scientists knew Typhus came with lice, and lice took hold wherever there was no water for showers or washing clothes. Such as places similar to the war fronts where soldiers were fighting enemies. Like in the ghettos the Jews were forced into at the beginning of Nazi invasions of a country. Scientists farmed lice from the people in the ghettos as a result.
Like I said, the facts, which are proven documented history, in this book are grotesque.
Concentration camp scientists were given resources and a little bit more food to do the work in a prisoner Block outfitted with stolen lab equipment from the countries Germany invaded. The book goes into excruciating graphic descriptions of how the Nazis transformed what had been legitimate areas of science and research into scenes of bestiality, depravity and worst of all in terms of actual legitimate scientific results, nonsense research despite topgrade equipment. The Nazis were erratic in their support, the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. Plus, the Nazis in charge were intellectually deficient in the norms of scientific knowledge, including those who were ordinary doctors or scientist specialists in other lines of research, but who had been put in charge of scientists studying Ricettsial bacteria.
Some of the anecdotes in this book would be hilarious if ultimately the consequences to the survivors weren't so horrific or that the stories were all true and not dark jokes.
The author also relates what happened in other concentration-camp labs that were doing inhuman ‘experiments’, I use the word reluctantly, by sadistic Nazi doctors and scientists on camp prisoners.
Eventually the Russians and the Allies found the camps, and the Nazi Germans, some few of them, faced courts of law and punishment. The scientists who had survived moved on. Unfortunately most did not go on to make amazing discoveries about Typhus, but their early work before World War II helped.
The book describes a lot of early important Typhus history, research, and about the researchers in Lwów before the war and what happened to some of them in Nazi custody. While not intensely interesting to read about, actually, because of their numbers (a lot of names are named!) they left behind journals or trial testimony, or interviews, parts of which contained pertinent historical information which the author used as source material.
There is a large Notes section and an index.
One significant research technique which was awesomely terrible, even if legitimate, was the use of human volunteers (which saved lives once the Nazis invaded) as intentional food for lice in the laboratory. Multiple boxes, with one side a mesh wall, full of lice, were strapped to the legs of volunteers. The lice fed on the blood in peoples’s legs. Sometimes the lice were infected with Typhus (they were attached to people who had survived Typhus or had been given a vaccine of sorts to test). The people often got anemia, but that was preferable to the camp ovens or a shooting squad.
September 2, 2014
An exhaustively researched look at a rather obscure piece of World War II history, still accessible to the lay person.
One quibble I had was that the title was a bit misleading - Dr. Weigl's story only occupies about a third of the narrative and the mention of name after name of people involved gets to be overwhelming, and for me, boring. But habitual readers of WW II history will not have that problem, I think.
One quibble I had was that the title was a bit misleading - Dr. Weigl's story only occupies about a third of the narrative and the mention of name after name of people involved gets to be overwhelming, and for me, boring. But habitual readers of WW II history will not have that problem, I think.
September 11, 2014
The best book I never finished
I generally don’t mind putting down books I don’t like — life is too short to waste time suffering through a bad book — but this was not a bad book and I regret not finishing it. It’s well-researched and Allen is a fine writer. I did find it a little disjointed and nonlinear at times, and it sometimes got bogged down in what felt like unnecessary details, but neither of those would have been enough to discourage me.
Instead, I found out I just can’t stomach the graphic details of horrible human actions.
When you read a book set mostly in Nazi-occupied Poland, especially one that deals with research from Jewish doctors taking place inside a concentration camp, it’s fair to expect some pretty dark stuff. But I was wholly unprepared for just how dark. I made it through the rapes and beatings and murder and gas chambers and wallets made of skin with growing discomfort. But when I got to the experiments on twins, I had to put it down.
I think the title threw me. I expected the book to be more about the history of typhus and lice, and a novel form of scientific resistance, set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany. Instead, it felt as if Nazi Germany WAS the story, in particular, the terrible, twisted things the Nazis did. The science behind the typhus research and the doomed scientists felt more like an organizing element connecting all the atrocities rather than the main story.
I wanted to know more about the Polish Jews sitting around smoking cigarettes and arguing mathematics with boxes of lice feeding on them, and more about the mechanics of vaccine-based resistance and less, MUCH less, about pantyless Nazi murderesses.
At two thirds of the way through, and filled with despair, I had to be done. Hopefully the person who found it (on the table next to the mineral water pool at Belknap Hot Springs) won’t be put off by the gruesome details and can better appreciate the clearly important contributions of Dr. Rudolf Weigl.
I generally don’t mind putting down books I don’t like — life is too short to waste time suffering through a bad book — but this was not a bad book and I regret not finishing it. It’s well-researched and Allen is a fine writer. I did find it a little disjointed and nonlinear at times, and it sometimes got bogged down in what felt like unnecessary details, but neither of those would have been enough to discourage me.
Instead, I found out I just can’t stomach the graphic details of horrible human actions.
When you read a book set mostly in Nazi-occupied Poland, especially one that deals with research from Jewish doctors taking place inside a concentration camp, it’s fair to expect some pretty dark stuff. But I was wholly unprepared for just how dark. I made it through the rapes and beatings and murder and gas chambers and wallets made of skin with growing discomfort. But when I got to the experiments on twins, I had to put it down.
I think the title threw me. I expected the book to be more about the history of typhus and lice, and a novel form of scientific resistance, set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany. Instead, it felt as if Nazi Germany WAS the story, in particular, the terrible, twisted things the Nazis did. The science behind the typhus research and the doomed scientists felt more like an organizing element connecting all the atrocities rather than the main story.
I wanted to know more about the Polish Jews sitting around smoking cigarettes and arguing mathematics with boxes of lice feeding on them, and more about the mechanics of vaccine-based resistance and less, MUCH less, about pantyless Nazi murderesses.
At two thirds of the way through, and filled with despair, I had to be done. Hopefully the person who found it (on the table next to the mineral water pool at Belknap Hot Springs) won’t be put off by the gruesome details and can better appreciate the clearly important contributions of Dr. Rudolf Weigl.
August 5, 2014
Portions of this book are quite fascinating. The description of the symptoms and epidemiology of Typhus as of Weigl's method of developing a vaccine are lucid and of considerable interest. Allen is especially interested in the scientist/philosopher Ludwick Fleck who worked for Weigl for a time. Allen's treatment of Fleck's ideas is superficial and unfortunately he adopts Fleck's term 'thought collective' as a buzz word that he uses often in unenlightening ways. Weigl did work for the Nazis and Fleck was taken to Auschwitz and later to Buchenwald. These facts lead Allen to pad his narrative with long stories about medical atrocities. While these stories are important in their own right, telling them as Allen does makes his tale rather kaleidoscopic. While Allen seems particularly concerned about the moral issues of scientists working for the Nazis, the rambling quality of his story telling never really focused my attention on this important moral issue.
October 9, 2014
A bit confusing. The author bounced around between various individuals and time frames. He seemed to want to be sure everyone was portrayed correctly at each moment in the book but that make it hard to follow. What was not confusing was how horrible WW II was to Jews and anyone who came under the influence of Hitler and his associates. If you ever doubted the brutality of the time, this book is a harsh reminder. While reporting on the typhus research, the author reports on any number of atrocities.
October 28, 2014
This is a miserable book to read but if it were not, it wouldn't be worth reading. The author provides a different approach to understanding a significant force in WWII -- typhus and it's vector, lice.
There are heroes in this book, bad persons who also do good things, bad persons who sought redemption, miserable villains, and far too many victims. The suffering is horrendous.
The graphic scenes are memorable. Who would have thought that a great Nazi hunter was once a louse feeder?
I am so pleased to have read this book, it gave new understanding, and modified my thinking.
October 11, 2014
This book contains valuable information, but it is difficult to read for two reasons. First, it covers almost too much territory (Polish history, Polish scientists, the fate of Poland's Jews during World War II, typhus, the efforts to make a vaccine against typhus, the Nazi atrocities in concentration camps, and more). Second, the discussion of what Nazi "physicians" and "scientists" did in some of the camps is deeply disturbing.
September 3, 2014
i heard about this book on NPR radio, the author was giving a preview to the listeners. very very interesting how dr weigl worked with the lice and typhus bacteria. brilliant man. what i didnt like about the book was lack of notes. the author just tells you things and you have to believe him or look it up on google. i didnt care for that. its worth a read though.
September 1, 2014
This book provides an over view of the history of Typhus. The author goes into more detail of the typhus epidemics of WWI and WWII. Some scientists call typhus the war disease. Allen tells the story of Rudolf Weigl who developed a vaccine for Typhus. Typhus is caused by the bacterium Rickettsia prowazekii. The Rickettsia is in body lice and unlike in other diseases the Rickettsia also kills the host lice. The body lice live on unclean people and clothing; therefore it flares up when there is social collapse. It is estimated that three to five million people were killed by Typhus in Russia and Poland in WWII. Allen covers in-depth the problems of Typhus in WWII. He stated that the Nazis were obsessed about the disease because of particularly odious aspect of their world view. “The louse carrier of Typhus was the symbol of the Jew in Nazi racial ideology”. The Reich was determined to protect Aryans, especially its military from the malady.
The Nazi turned to Dr. Weigl an ethnic Austrian, and Dr. Ludwik Fleck a Polish Jew to help them with a vaccine. Rudolf Stefan Weigl (1883-1957) had his doctorate in zoology and was drafted by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during WWI to fight Typhus. In 1921 he established a research institute in Lwow Poland now called Lviv in Ukraine. He was successful in creating a vaccine. His laboratory and “lice farm” is still active today in Lviv Ukraine. Weigl saved many lives of Jews and intellectuals by hiring them in his lab.
Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961) doctorate was in immunology. He joined Weigl in 1919 to work on the typhus research. In 1921 he developed a test to diagnose typhus. He was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1943 to work on the typhus vaccine. He developed two vaccines one was worthless serum he shipped to the SS troops at the front. The effective one he used to secretly treat the prisoners.
Weigl and Flick’s post WWII lives were under the communist rule of Ukraine. Weigl had a jealous supervisor who kept blocking his nomination for the Nobel Prize. Fleck was forced to move to Lublin Poland to teach in the University. He was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and suffered anti-Semitism. In 1957 he managed to immigrate to Israel and died in 1961.
The book does not cover the work of the American and British scientist who also developed a vaccine or the use of DDT to kill the lice. Allen writes without sanctimony and never simplifies the people in the book. He just states provable facts. When writing about the Holocaust it is often difficult not to let emotion get in the way of the facts but the author did an excellent job staying to clinical detail. Allen avoided writing a depressing narration with a masterful attention to detail, Allen has assembled a story of tragedy, courage, scientific creativity and ethics.
I read this as an audio book downloaded from Audible. Dennis Holland does a good job narrating the book. If you are interested in scientific history or WWII history this is an excellent captivating story for you. I barely covered the highlights of the story you will need to read the book to fully understand the complexities of the story.
The Nazi turned to Dr. Weigl an ethnic Austrian, and Dr. Ludwik Fleck a Polish Jew to help them with a vaccine. Rudolf Stefan Weigl (1883-1957) had his doctorate in zoology and was drafted by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during WWI to fight Typhus. In 1921 he established a research institute in Lwow Poland now called Lviv in Ukraine. He was successful in creating a vaccine. His laboratory and “lice farm” is still active today in Lviv Ukraine. Weigl saved many lives of Jews and intellectuals by hiring them in his lab.
Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961) doctorate was in immunology. He joined Weigl in 1919 to work on the typhus research. In 1921 he developed a test to diagnose typhus. He was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1943 to work on the typhus vaccine. He developed two vaccines one was worthless serum he shipped to the SS troops at the front. The effective one he used to secretly treat the prisoners.
Weigl and Flick’s post WWII lives were under the communist rule of Ukraine. Weigl had a jealous supervisor who kept blocking his nomination for the Nobel Prize. Fleck was forced to move to Lublin Poland to teach in the University. He was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and suffered anti-Semitism. In 1957 he managed to immigrate to Israel and died in 1961.
The book does not cover the work of the American and British scientist who also developed a vaccine or the use of DDT to kill the lice. Allen writes without sanctimony and never simplifies the people in the book. He just states provable facts. When writing about the Holocaust it is often difficult not to let emotion get in the way of the facts but the author did an excellent job staying to clinical detail. Allen avoided writing a depressing narration with a masterful attention to detail, Allen has assembled a story of tragedy, courage, scientific creativity and ethics.
I read this as an audio book downloaded from Audible. Dennis Holland does a good job narrating the book. If you are interested in scientific history or WWII history this is an excellent captivating story for you. I barely covered the highlights of the story you will need to read the book to fully understand the complexities of the story.
October 26, 2018
A. Allen’s book about the glorious lives of professors Rudolf Weigl and Ludwig Fleck is a very interesting and enlightening read. The amount of historical material that the author carefully studied and used in his book is truly impressive. The book brings us back to the forties, the era of turbulent socio-political events and destructive wars where a human live became particularly vulnerable. One of the biggest threats to humans were tiny lice which carried fatal typhus disease. The epidemics was spreading fast, claiming hundreds of thousands people across the whole Eurasia. Weigl’s vaccine created using an innovative and previously unknown method was among the first effective means of fighting this terrible disease. As my teacher Dr. Henryk Mosing pointed out, the genius of R. Weigl was in his success of transforming a lice, this symbol of dirt and disgust, into a useful object of the laboratory research which ultimately led to the creation of the first vaccine against typhus. This groundbreaking invention helped the humanity successfully fight against the devastating epidemic typhus. L. Fleck, in his turn, successfully used the process of producing the vaccine to rescue people not only from the disease itself, but also from the risk of extermination by Nazis. Prof. Fleck’s courage in the face of danger deserves respect and remembrance.
The events depicted in the book describe the tragedy caused by cruel and inhumane totalitarian regimes. However, even during those disastrous times there were fascinating examples of human kindness, thoughtfulness and compassion. One of such examples, is the life of Sergey Terekhov who was the first director of the Lviv Institute of Bacteriology (also known as Sanbaktinsitut), founded by the Soviet government in 1940 on the basis of the R. Weigl’s Laboratory. You can find more information about accomplishments of S. Terekhov in my personal blog (https://goo.gl/jb3nYK). This blog also describes valuable details regarding the activities of F.Eisenberg, under whose leadership R. Weigl began his research.
The events depicted in the book describe the tragedy caused by cruel and inhumane totalitarian regimes. However, even during those disastrous times there were fascinating examples of human kindness, thoughtfulness and compassion. One of such examples, is the life of Sergey Terekhov who was the first director of the Lviv Institute of Bacteriology (also known as Sanbaktinsitut), founded by the Soviet government in 1940 on the basis of the R. Weigl’s Laboratory. You can find more information about accomplishments of S. Terekhov in my personal blog (https://goo.gl/jb3nYK). This blog also describes valuable details regarding the activities of F.Eisenberg, under whose leadership R. Weigl began his research.
October 17, 2014
The contrast between typhus research and the horrors of WWII is a stark one. Dr. Weigl is an interesting feature as an ethnic German who declined an offer of citizenship in favor of his adopted Polish homeland. His ethical creation of a vaccine that he hesitated to test on anyone but himself and then only slowly gave to people who would be exposed to typhus through their humanitarian work is admirable, if not scientifically rigorous. The Nazi doctors who injected political prisoners with infected human blood to experiment with the idea of a different vaccine are equally loathsome.
Not only fighting typhus, the scientists were a part of the Polish resistance. Weigl's vaccine required the guts of infected lice, accquired through a meticulous, labor intensive process. To continue production at the rate the German's demanded, he was able to employ a number of resistance and Home Army officers, keeping them under the radar. His responsible use of authority makes Weigl the more conventionally appreciable scientist.
Ludwik Fleck, the other immunologist considered with some depth by this book, did his work from a concentration camp. A brilliant philosopher in addition to a gifted scientist, Fleck is an intriguing figure. Unlike Weigl, knowing that the vaccine he produced would go only to German soldiers, he arranged with his fellows to sabotage the doses. Arguably a more valuable act of resistance than the shelter and succor Weigl gave to the Poles.
This book is not for the faint of heart or those too easily disgusted by medical detail, insects, or the tragic conditions of concentration camps. That said, it is an excellent, thorough history of an infrequently explored theater of the war: disease.
Not only fighting typhus, the scientists were a part of the Polish resistance. Weigl's vaccine required the guts of infected lice, accquired through a meticulous, labor intensive process. To continue production at the rate the German's demanded, he was able to employ a number of resistance and Home Army officers, keeping them under the radar. His responsible use of authority makes Weigl the more conventionally appreciable scientist.
Ludwik Fleck, the other immunologist considered with some depth by this book, did his work from a concentration camp. A brilliant philosopher in addition to a gifted scientist, Fleck is an intriguing figure. Unlike Weigl, knowing that the vaccine he produced would go only to German soldiers, he arranged with his fellows to sabotage the doses. Arguably a more valuable act of resistance than the shelter and succor Weigl gave to the Poles.
This book is not for the faint of heart or those too easily disgusted by medical detail, insects, or the tragic conditions of concentration camps. That said, it is an excellent, thorough history of an infrequently explored theater of the war: disease.
November 7, 2018
I agree with the reviewer who noted the title was misleading. There was more focus on other details rather than on Dr. Weigl and his actual work. Over-all though the book serves a good purpose in bringing to light a portion of history that has been sadly overlooked. The research and vaccine developed against typhus were invaluable and need more enlightenment. I thoroughly enjoyed all the actual lab work that is described, as well as finding out more about these significant characters from a disturbing period in world history.
September 18, 2014
The microbiologist in me drew me to this book. It truly is a fascinating story, but at times it is a bit disjointed and the introduction of so many people can be a bit confusing. The stories of Drs. Fleck & Weigl are interesting but it makes up a relatively small part of the book. Interesting history and the foundation of medical ethics nonetheless.
September 14, 2014
What a great book. This is the story of a man who with his fellow scientists at a small laboratory in the Ukraine discovered the cause and a cure for typhus during WWII. The relationship of these scientists with the Nazis was an unusual one to say the least.
December 2, 2016
I highly recommend this fascinating book about the medical research and the effects of Typhus before and during the Holocaust.
It is a slow and difficult read, but definitely worth the time and effort. I learnt so much and feel enriched by the read.
It is a slow and difficult read, but definitely worth the time and effort. I learnt so much and feel enriched by the read.
August 10, 2014
Imagine a pocketwatch. Taken in its functioning state, the watch seems simple and singular: a solid round case, a numbered face, two moving arms, a glass dome, a winder, and a chain. Pry away the back of the device, however, and you discover another layer: an assortment of cogs, winches, springs, wheels, screws, regulators, stones, jewels, wheels, and clicks. Without these smaller pieces, the larger machine could not function; even if only one of the many parts broke or malfunctioned, the entire apparatus would immediately become unusable. Begin removing these surface pieces one at a time, and even more layers reveal themselves. The more intricate, advanced, and expensive the watch, the more developed its inner workings.
Studying a historical event is like examining a pocketwatch. At first, we see only the overriding whole: the war itself, the results of an election, the man setting two feet on the moon. When we begin to dig, however--through memoirs, articles, interviews, diaries, photographs, memorandums, letters, video--we see the smaller parts, the machinery. Each demands a thorough study all its own, until the story of this one event--this metaphorical pocketwatch--becomes the story of several events and several pieces, to the point where scrutiny and interest narrows until it has focused on the tooth of every cog, and one large narrative is suddenly one hundred or one thousand. Some of these pocketwatches are small and disassemble easily; others continue to reveal their deeper layers and smaller pieces centuries after the fact.
Such is and will forever be the case with the Holocaust. There is no event comparable to it in breadth, scope, relevance, horrors, contradictions, and unanswered questions; and such was its magnitude that every major catastrophe, every condemnable human rights abuse or genocide or ethnic cleansing, is held up against the Holocaust and compared, as though it were now the one true measure of our own inhumanity. Nothing has ever come close, and just as we threaten to forget, it offers up more of itself--another layer of its being. An unmarked grave, perhaps, or a forest that has flourished around hundreds of bomb-craters. A house goes up for sale, is inspected, and reveals hideaways, transforming the collective emptiness of those crawl-spaces into something haunting and unresolved. A search through storage or archives reveals a manuscript or box of letters that has gone unseen in six decades--another life confirmed, another experience ready to be told. Every life taken is a story unspoken, and every unspoken story is another chapter of history that will forever go unread--a piece of the watch that has fallen away and cannot be replaced.
Arthur Allen's book The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl is the story of two scientists--two pieces of that great historical pocketwatch--whose determination to find a cure for typhus was threatened by World War II and the Holocaust. Both men followed separate paths--Rudolf Weigl operated his lab in the heart of Lwow, while Ludwik Fleck worked in Jewish ghettoes and eventually the hospitals at Auschwitz and Buchenwald--but pursuing the same goal. Along the way, they faced threats of violence and death, as did the hundreds of men and women who worked alongside them. Some of them, unfortunately, would not survive the war, but the majority did, and they were able to say that it had been because of two men whose research--invaluable to the German army, as their troops were at the greater risk of contracting typhus, and the infected populations of the ghetto threatened to spread it beyond their confines--offered a refuge when there was none. In fact, Weigl and Fleck did their best to help the subjugated and innocent over the violent and destructive: Weigl protected his employees by giving them safety in his lab, and his employees smuggled extra vials into the ghetto while under-developing the vials set aside for Nazi inoculations; and Fleck devised a false cure for the Nazi officials of the concentration camp while replicating the real cure for its prisoners. At war's end, both men had saved lives--on top of creating a legitimate cure for typhus--while working in a system that had done the opposite. And while some have argued that both Weigl and Fleck compromised their ethics by working under Nazi leadership rather than refusing, which risked certain death, that compromise had a much more positive and lasting effect than dying as martyrs, since they could use the isolation of their work to heal and protect others while undermining those in power.
This story is a small wheel in the entire record of the Holocaust--one chapter among millions that work together to tell the whole story. And within the story of these two modest scientists are others, both good and bad, that are just as worthy of elaboration: Erwin Ding, head of the Buchenwald hospital, whose pathetic self-image weakened him enough that the prisoners working under him could manipulate him with ease; Hermann Eyer, the Nazi overseer of Weigl's clinic, who understood what the doctor and his staff were doing with their vaccines but chose to turn a blind eye; Hans Baermann, a Buchenwald inmate who boiled the rabbits from typhus experiments and fed their meat to other prisoners; the various men and women whose dedication to curing typhus--and helping those in the ghettoes and camps--required letting thousands of lice feed on their blood every day, a process based on symbiosis at a time when savagery was the norm; and so on. Remove any single one of these people, and the entire story changes. Whether it shifts towards better or worse is not for us to say--time would have continued on, the watch would have kept up its tick-tock--but the fact that we know this part of the past exists is a victory in itself.
There is another reason why the pocketwatch serves as such a fitting analogy to history. Beyond their shared intricacies and the delicate ways in which each functions, there comes a point when even the finest and most reliable of timekeepers goes still. No watch is immortal to aging, and its pieces can only be replaced so many times before it's no longer the same tool it once was. Such is history. There will come a point in the not-too-distant future--in my lifetime--when the last living survivor of the Holocaust passes away, and suddenly we will be without witnesses. We will have lost our connection to that event, to a reminder of what happens when we give in to our lesser selves. We will have lost the muscle of our conscience. In the years after, there will be discoveries and reviews--unseen interviews, untranslated memoirs, forgotten letters or unsealed documents--and those will do much to finish a few of the unfinished chapters, keeping the connection alive for just a bit longer. But it will be a weak connection, like a story shouted across the sea from shores that grow ever more distant and enveloped in fog. We will replace our reliance on these witnesses with records, videos, analyses, but they will not be the same as sitting across from them, human being before human being, and allowing their existence to confirm the existence of so many millions of others who do not have the luxury of being heard.
Books like Allen's will not cease to be written when the pocketwatch goes still, nor should they be, and he is neither the first nor the last to write about this subject--the more that is learned, the more that needs to be written. But there will come a time when the research will become final, and there will be nothing new to write about--not because the literature will have been exhausted and the witnesses will all have told their stories, but because there will be no new literature and no more witnesses. It is vital that the shelves of Holocaust research continue to expand, because there will come a time when those shelves will hold all we have. And when the history of an event stops growing--when our knowledge suddenly has boundaries, when winding the pocketwatch has no effect--we will be lost and left without voices to guide us home.
This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.
Studying a historical event is like examining a pocketwatch. At first, we see only the overriding whole: the war itself, the results of an election, the man setting two feet on the moon. When we begin to dig, however--through memoirs, articles, interviews, diaries, photographs, memorandums, letters, video--we see the smaller parts, the machinery. Each demands a thorough study all its own, until the story of this one event--this metaphorical pocketwatch--becomes the story of several events and several pieces, to the point where scrutiny and interest narrows until it has focused on the tooth of every cog, and one large narrative is suddenly one hundred or one thousand. Some of these pocketwatches are small and disassemble easily; others continue to reveal their deeper layers and smaller pieces centuries after the fact.
Such is and will forever be the case with the Holocaust. There is no event comparable to it in breadth, scope, relevance, horrors, contradictions, and unanswered questions; and such was its magnitude that every major catastrophe, every condemnable human rights abuse or genocide or ethnic cleansing, is held up against the Holocaust and compared, as though it were now the one true measure of our own inhumanity. Nothing has ever come close, and just as we threaten to forget, it offers up more of itself--another layer of its being. An unmarked grave, perhaps, or a forest that has flourished around hundreds of bomb-craters. A house goes up for sale, is inspected, and reveals hideaways, transforming the collective emptiness of those crawl-spaces into something haunting and unresolved. A search through storage or archives reveals a manuscript or box of letters that has gone unseen in six decades--another life confirmed, another experience ready to be told. Every life taken is a story unspoken, and every unspoken story is another chapter of history that will forever go unread--a piece of the watch that has fallen away and cannot be replaced.
Arthur Allen's book The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl is the story of two scientists--two pieces of that great historical pocketwatch--whose determination to find a cure for typhus was threatened by World War II and the Holocaust. Both men followed separate paths--Rudolf Weigl operated his lab in the heart of Lwow, while Ludwik Fleck worked in Jewish ghettoes and eventually the hospitals at Auschwitz and Buchenwald--but pursuing the same goal. Along the way, they faced threats of violence and death, as did the hundreds of men and women who worked alongside them. Some of them, unfortunately, would not survive the war, but the majority did, and they were able to say that it had been because of two men whose research--invaluable to the German army, as their troops were at the greater risk of contracting typhus, and the infected populations of the ghetto threatened to spread it beyond their confines--offered a refuge when there was none. In fact, Weigl and Fleck did their best to help the subjugated and innocent over the violent and destructive: Weigl protected his employees by giving them safety in his lab, and his employees smuggled extra vials into the ghetto while under-developing the vials set aside for Nazi inoculations; and Fleck devised a false cure for the Nazi officials of the concentration camp while replicating the real cure for its prisoners. At war's end, both men had saved lives--on top of creating a legitimate cure for typhus--while working in a system that had done the opposite. And while some have argued that both Weigl and Fleck compromised their ethics by working under Nazi leadership rather than refusing, which risked certain death, that compromise had a much more positive and lasting effect than dying as martyrs, since they could use the isolation of their work to heal and protect others while undermining those in power.
This story is a small wheel in the entire record of the Holocaust--one chapter among millions that work together to tell the whole story. And within the story of these two modest scientists are others, both good and bad, that are just as worthy of elaboration: Erwin Ding, head of the Buchenwald hospital, whose pathetic self-image weakened him enough that the prisoners working under him could manipulate him with ease; Hermann Eyer, the Nazi overseer of Weigl's clinic, who understood what the doctor and his staff were doing with their vaccines but chose to turn a blind eye; Hans Baermann, a Buchenwald inmate who boiled the rabbits from typhus experiments and fed their meat to other prisoners; the various men and women whose dedication to curing typhus--and helping those in the ghettoes and camps--required letting thousands of lice feed on their blood every day, a process based on symbiosis at a time when savagery was the norm; and so on. Remove any single one of these people, and the entire story changes. Whether it shifts towards better or worse is not for us to say--time would have continued on, the watch would have kept up its tick-tock--but the fact that we know this part of the past exists is a victory in itself.
There is another reason why the pocketwatch serves as such a fitting analogy to history. Beyond their shared intricacies and the delicate ways in which each functions, there comes a point when even the finest and most reliable of timekeepers goes still. No watch is immortal to aging, and its pieces can only be replaced so many times before it's no longer the same tool it once was. Such is history. There will come a point in the not-too-distant future--in my lifetime--when the last living survivor of the Holocaust passes away, and suddenly we will be without witnesses. We will have lost our connection to that event, to a reminder of what happens when we give in to our lesser selves. We will have lost the muscle of our conscience. In the years after, there will be discoveries and reviews--unseen interviews, untranslated memoirs, forgotten letters or unsealed documents--and those will do much to finish a few of the unfinished chapters, keeping the connection alive for just a bit longer. But it will be a weak connection, like a story shouted across the sea from shores that grow ever more distant and enveloped in fog. We will replace our reliance on these witnesses with records, videos, analyses, but they will not be the same as sitting across from them, human being before human being, and allowing their existence to confirm the existence of so many millions of others who do not have the luxury of being heard.
Books like Allen's will not cease to be written when the pocketwatch goes still, nor should they be, and he is neither the first nor the last to write about this subject--the more that is learned, the more that needs to be written. But there will come a time when the research will become final, and there will be nothing new to write about--not because the literature will have been exhausted and the witnesses will all have told their stories, but because there will be no new literature and no more witnesses. It is vital that the shelves of Holocaust research continue to expand, because there will come a time when those shelves will hold all we have. And when the history of an event stops growing--when our knowledge suddenly has boundaries, when winding the pocketwatch has no effect--we will be lost and left without voices to guide us home.
This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.
May 15, 2025
a powerful difficult read
Any topic that deals with concentration camps during WWII is bound to be difficult, even more so when dealing with medical experiments at the camp. Yet we can not forget what happened and the heroes who in their own way did what they could.
The writing of this book is a little difficult with a large list of characters constantly jumping around, but the compelling story does drive the reader through.
Any topic that deals with concentration camps during WWII is bound to be difficult, even more so when dealing with medical experiments at the camp. Yet we can not forget what happened and the heroes who in their own way did what they could.
The writing of this book is a little difficult with a large list of characters constantly jumping around, but the compelling story does drive the reader through.
July 30, 2018
Excellent work. The science and history portions are well-researched and well-integrated. I doubt that I'll need to read another book on typhus ever (which is a compliment).
March 31, 2018
Fascinating, complex, and written in a colloquial style.
July 18, 2021
Gift from Dr. Evan Morris -- timing was perfect -- finished in the middle of another pandemic needing vaccine.
November 3, 2017
I had anticipated liking this book more than I ended up doing. I think it was because my decision to read the book was driven by the word "sabotaged", and I opened the book with that goal in mind : how did these microbiologist manage to shunt an ineffective typhus vaccine to the Nazis and the effective vaccine to either inmates in the camps or Poles near Lviv? It turns out that story was only a small part of the overall content of the book, which seems to have been conceived more as a broad canvas of the vanished intellectual life of Lviv. Between occupations by the Germans, the Russians, the Nazis, the Russians again (if I kept track of the successive invasions correctly), Lviv's mixed population of Jews, Poles, Ukrainians and even some ethnic Germans, had much to suffer in the first half of the 20th century. Somehow this seething melting point managed to produce some excellent scientists and mathematicians, whose daily habits in the waning years of the Austrian empire are lovingly sketched. Then came the dark days of Hitler and finally, towards the end of the book, the lowering of the Iron Curtain.
Into this (detailed) background of these political and military disasters, the author weaves another thread, that of the research into typhus. I actually felt this part was rather weak. There is much epidemiological data ("In year a in city b, c number of people fell ill with typhus and d % of them died), and this does drive home the message of how terrible this (now virtually unknown) disease really is. But the history of typhus research comes in snippets, now Lviv, now the Pasteur institute, now the Koch institute. We are almost halfway through the book before we find a description of how Dr. Weigl actually made his famous vaccine.
Ah, the vaccines! Ostensibly the main topic of this book, there seem to be half a dozen vaccines coming from all over the world. Some made in eggs, some made in rabbits, some made in lice and some made from the urine of infected patients. The vaccine made from lice guts was developed by Dr. Weigl, a talented but eccentric microbiologist, who, as a Catholic and ethnic German, albeit one who had lived all this life in Lviv, was able to spend WWII in his laboratory. The act of sabotage from the title, as applied to him, consisted of two aspects : attempts to send a diluted and therefore presumably inactive vaccine to the German troops, and to shunt some of the active vaccine to the local civilians, and the recruitment of as many as possible of the threatened Polish intellectuals and resistance workers as technicians or lice feeders. This last job consisted of having one's blood sucked by the lice, twice a day. Unpleasant though this sounds, being involved with the institute where the lice vaccine was produced was considered a rather protected occupation, since the scientifically ignorant SS tended to give anyone concerned with typhus research a wide berth.
The other scientist, Fleckl, was Jewish, so he had a whole different set of circumstances to deal with. He ended up being taken to the camps to produce typhus vaccine and typhus "research" under the malevolent eye of Dr. Ding and his coterie of Nazi doctors. The act of sabotage referred to in the title as it applies to him and his coworkers was that they made an inactive vaccine for the troops and tried to smuggle the boiled meat of the rabbits used for cultivating the typhus germ out to the starving camp inmates. This is based on testimony from the lab workers, nearly all of them camp inmates themselves.
In summary : this book is more about the politics and atrocities of WWII than about typhus. There are dozens and dozens of scientists, intellectuals, Nazis and political figures who make a brief appearance and then disappear. I found the thread of science/medicine hard to follow and the detailed description of Nazi brutality made the book emotionally hard to digest.
Into this (detailed) background of these political and military disasters, the author weaves another thread, that of the research into typhus. I actually felt this part was rather weak. There is much epidemiological data ("In year a in city b, c number of people fell ill with typhus and d % of them died), and this does drive home the message of how terrible this (now virtually unknown) disease really is. But the history of typhus research comes in snippets, now Lviv, now the Pasteur institute, now the Koch institute. We are almost halfway through the book before we find a description of how Dr. Weigl actually made his famous vaccine.
Ah, the vaccines! Ostensibly the main topic of this book, there seem to be half a dozen vaccines coming from all over the world. Some made in eggs, some made in rabbits, some made in lice and some made from the urine of infected patients. The vaccine made from lice guts was developed by Dr. Weigl, a talented but eccentric microbiologist, who, as a Catholic and ethnic German, albeit one who had lived all this life in Lviv, was able to spend WWII in his laboratory. The act of sabotage from the title, as applied to him, consisted of two aspects : attempts to send a diluted and therefore presumably inactive vaccine to the German troops, and to shunt some of the active vaccine to the local civilians, and the recruitment of as many as possible of the threatened Polish intellectuals and resistance workers as technicians or lice feeders. This last job consisted of having one's blood sucked by the lice, twice a day. Unpleasant though this sounds, being involved with the institute where the lice vaccine was produced was considered a rather protected occupation, since the scientifically ignorant SS tended to give anyone concerned with typhus research a wide berth.
The other scientist, Fleckl, was Jewish, so he had a whole different set of circumstances to deal with. He ended up being taken to the camps to produce typhus vaccine and typhus "research" under the malevolent eye of Dr. Ding and his coterie of Nazi doctors. The act of sabotage referred to in the title as it applies to him and his coworkers was that they made an inactive vaccine for the troops and tried to smuggle the boiled meat of the rabbits used for cultivating the typhus germ out to the starving camp inmates. This is based on testimony from the lab workers, nearly all of them camp inmates themselves.
In summary : this book is more about the politics and atrocities of WWII than about typhus. There are dozens and dozens of scientists, intellectuals, Nazis and political figures who make a brief appearance and then disappear. I found the thread of science/medicine hard to follow and the detailed description of Nazi brutality made the book emotionally hard to digest.
August 9, 2014
Some of it was really interesting and I'm always interested in medical stuff. But some of it felt like a long slog with TMI. Still, I learned a lot of about typhus and am very grateful that it has been eradicated from daily life.
August 9, 2014
3.5 review to follow.
October 31, 2014
I learned a lot but lets just say I wasn't waiting with baited breath for my next reading session, Lots of information but little excitement!
February 5, 2017
“The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl” by Arthur Allen is a small diamond I happened to find snuggled up to one of my favorite books in the Provo City Library. It was located in the well-stocked (if not well read) medical non-fiction section on the upper floor. The book predominantly focuses on the lives of Rudolf Weigl and Ludwick Fleck, two scientists from very different backgrounds who are tied together by their line of research: typhus. Both called city of Lwow their home, a city filled with the brightest minds of the Polish intelligentsia who made cafes their forums for thought. Weigl, an ethnic German, ran his own laboratory where he produced the Weigl vaccine, one of the only successful field-tested vaccines for typhus at the time. Fleck, a Polish Jew, was also successful (though often passed up for academic honors because of his ethnic heritage). He ran his own laboratory and wrote essays on science and philosophy. The lives of both men were upturned with the arrival of the Nazis in Poland. Allen’s book movingly tells of their struggles, of Weigl as he tries to save friends and strangers with the influence of his laboratory and of Fleck as he perseveres through the hell of the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Heavily coated with medical and historical information, this narrative shows a unique perspective on the events leading up to, through, and after WW II. A definite read for history buffs, science lovers, and anyone looking to broaden their intellectual horizon.
August 4, 2025
I didn't know I'd feel sorry for lice reading this.
End up getting Rickettsia inserted into their butts (the lice) by people who were literally doing this to try and stay alive. I was completely astonished. Science is pretty gross sometimes but this was off the charts for me.
I agree with many of the reviewers this book is an exhausting read but I found it hard to put down.
Living in a time where people are turning down vaccinations while thinking of these poor, traumatized, starving victims who gratefully received it (while people risked their lives to sneak it to them) just to live just a little bit longer because of it, in those conditions. What a GUT PUNCH.
This book is a bit more story than it is science, but the author does go into sometimes gruesome detail explaining how the vaccine was invented, who risked their lives to test it and as well as the underappreciated little animals who bore the brunt of the medical innovation. We humans do have a lot to answer for.
The bravery of the people who survived all this and worked while under these circumstance is profound and humbling. I could only hope that if I found myself in such situations that I could be of some use and have the gift of powerful purpose while facing death at any moment.
I wish more people cared to know about what went on here. We would have had a very different Pandemic (in the US) and we should be giving parades to celebrate the people who got us a vaccine so incredibly quickly.
No more Nazi books for me. This stuff is unbelievably awful.
End up getting Rickettsia inserted into their butts (the lice) by people who were literally doing this to try and stay alive. I was completely astonished. Science is pretty gross sometimes but this was off the charts for me.
I agree with many of the reviewers this book is an exhausting read but I found it hard to put down.
Living in a time where people are turning down vaccinations while thinking of these poor, traumatized, starving victims who gratefully received it (while people risked their lives to sneak it to them) just to live just a little bit longer because of it, in those conditions. What a GUT PUNCH.
This book is a bit more story than it is science, but the author does go into sometimes gruesome detail explaining how the vaccine was invented, who risked their lives to test it and as well as the underappreciated little animals who bore the brunt of the medical innovation. We humans do have a lot to answer for.
The bravery of the people who survived all this and worked while under these circumstance is profound and humbling. I could only hope that if I found myself in such situations that I could be of some use and have the gift of powerful purpose while facing death at any moment.
I wish more people cared to know about what went on here. We would have had a very different Pandemic (in the US) and we should be giving parades to celebrate the people who got us a vaccine so incredibly quickly.
No more Nazi books for me. This stuff is unbelievably awful.
January 2, 2017
I was attracted to this book because I wanted to read about scientists tricking Nazis, a fact that was kind of mentioned in passing as the story of developing a typhus vaccine unfolded. Once again, I am humbled by how little I have known about the suffering of Jews before, during, and following World War II. High school and college history courses don't cover the details of Nazi atrocities in enough detail to paint a full picture. The book focuses on the Polish scientist Rudolf Weigl who worked during WW II to develop the typhus vaccine and, in the process, saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives by "hiring" Jews to work in laboratories and smuggling fully effective typhus vaccines into Polish ghettos while sending diluted versions to Nazi troops. The scientists' living conditions, their neglect and abuse at the hands of the Gestapo, their personal and professional sacrifices, and their suffering were described in such a way that I was left with a new appreciation of humankind's ability to do good for others while suffering unimaginable abuse in the midst of severe personal trials. This isn't a book you may like to read. It's a book you SHOULD read.
December 22, 2018
This book tells the intriguing history of typhus and its impact on World War 2, particularly for Nazi Germany. Dr. Weigl, a Polish physician-scientist, was the first to create a vaccine for this disease, carried by lice, and having a devastating impact on human health, particularly in limited hygiene conditions. His process was harrowing, difficult and required human volunteers to act as feeders. His lab became a key center for the resistance movement, and provided a source of vaccine for those fighting against the Nazis and for those being oppressed in the ghettos. His lab saved many of the educated members of society that would have been doomed by the occupation, including other scientists, writers, and professors. He provided work and a safe refuge for many, one of them, a Jewish immunologist named Ludwik Fleck. Captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, he was pulled in by the Nazis to help create another source for vaccines. He used his difficult position to help others within the camp, secretly inoculating those most at risk. This was an intriguing presentation of one of the many diseases that has played an important role in a pivot point in history.
January 30, 2018
Another truth-is-stranger-than-fiction science history. Set in Poland and Germany, the book follows the careers of two Polish microbiologists, Rudolf Weigl and Ludwik Fleck, who worked towards the elimination of typhus. Characters from other books crop up—The White Rabbit from William Stevenson’s history of the British SOE, “Spymistress,” Anne Frank and her sister. I now know more than I ever needed to know about lice, the primary carriers of typhus. I had to do background research on the Goethe Oak*, a historic tree that was the sole remnant of the forest that gave the Buchenwald death camp its name. But the thing that amazed me most was the world view of Nazi hierarchy who could look right past actual science without seeing it, and turn to medieval prejudice as a basis for disease control. Interestingly, Fleck is best known today for a 1935 book on this very problem—the ability of the human mind to turn solid facts into fluid opinion.
* https://www.nzz.ch/articleEMAWX-1.73138
* https://www.nzz.ch/articleEMAWX-1.73138
December 19, 2025
This was the perfect book for me and I knew I was going to love it as soon as I learned it existed. An entomologist fighting Nazis? Like, not just fighting them but using his specific entomological expertise (as the creator of a vaccine against epidemic typhus, which is louse-borne) to undermine/subvert their authority. I could not dream up a more perfectly personally inspirational tale in my wildest imagination-- Dr. Rudolf Weigl is the hero I need.
Parts of it are difficult to read because, well, the Holocaust is hard to read about. But given that some 20% of young Americans think the Holocaust is a myth, it's becoming increasingly important to tell these stories-- stories of the atrocities, yes, but (equally important) the stories of resistance. I'm making it a part of my life's mission to share Dr. Weigl's story and will likely be gifting numerous copies of this book.
Parts of it are difficult to read because, well, the Holocaust is hard to read about. But given that some 20% of young Americans think the Holocaust is a myth, it's becoming increasingly important to tell these stories-- stories of the atrocities, yes, but (equally important) the stories of resistance. I'm making it a part of my life's mission to share Dr. Weigl's story and will likely be gifting numerous copies of this book.
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