Ángel Sanz Briz
Ángel Sanz Briz was a Spanish diplomat who served under Francoist Spain during World War II. He saved the lives of some five thousand Hungarian Jews from deportation to Auschwitz. Sanz Briz is sometimes referred to as "the angel of Budapest". Sanz Briz was born on September 1910 in Zaragoza, he earned a degree in law at the Central University of Madrid, in 1933 entered the diplomatic School in Madrid. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War he volunteered to join the Nationalist side of the struggle, serving as a truck driver in the Cuerpo de Ejército Marroquí, a unit of Francisco Franco's army created in 1937 and commanded by General Juan Yagüe. After completing his studies in Madrid, his first diplomatic posting was to Cairo, he was sent to Budapest in 1942. Between June and December 1944, he and his assistants issued fake Spanish papers to 5,200 Jews, saving them from deportation to concentration camps, he received authorization to provide papers to 200 Jews, continued to enlarge this amount until he reached 5,200.
In some cases, he acquired houses in Budapest at his own cost in order to provide shelter for the refugees, which made the difference between life and death for those Jews. He convinced the Hungarian authorities that Spain, under the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera had given Spanish citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Primo de Rivera had issued such a decree on December 20, 1924 but it had been cancelled in 1930, a fact the Hungarian authorities were not aware of. Sanz Briz dutifully informed the Spanish Foreign Ministry of his actions, which were neither forbidden nor encouraged by Madrid. In 1944, as the Red Army approached Budapest, he followed government orders to leave for Switzerland, he was replaced by the Italian Giorgio Perlasca, who pretended to be a Spanish consul and continued to issue Spanish visas and to patrol the safehouse system for Jews set up by Sanz Briz. After these events, Sanz Briz continued his diplomatic career: he was posted to San Francisco and Washington, D.
C. Ambassador to Lima, Bayonne, The Hague and China. In 1976 he was sent to Rome as Ambassador of Spain to the Holy See, where he died on June 11, 1980. Sanz Briz himself tells how he was able to save the lives of so many Jews, in Federico Ysart's book Los judíos en España, he is the subject of the 2011 Spanish television series El ángel de Budapest, based on Diego Carcedo’s book Un español frente al Holocausto. In 1942 he married Adela Quijano y Secades, with whom he had four children: Adela, Paloma, Ángeles, Juan Carlos. Sanz Briz died June 1980 in Rome. In 1991, he was recognized by the Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem of the State of Israel, who gave his family the title of Righteous Among the Nations. In 1994 the Government of Hungary gave him the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary. In 2015, a Budapest street was renamed as Angel Sanz Briz Avenue. Gilberto Bosques Saldívar The angel of Budapest - Angel Sanz Briz, by Salvo Haim Alhadeffas in the European Sephardic Institute Ángel Sanz Briz: International Raoul Wallenberg foundation Angel Sanz Briz
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process; the official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire; the Nazi regime ended. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the President of the Weimar Republic, Paul von Hindenburg, on 30 January 1933; the NSDAP began to eliminate all political opposition and consolidate its power. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934 and Hitler became dictator of Germany by merging the offices and powers of the Chancellery and Presidency. A national referendum held 19 August 1934 confirmed Hitler as sole Führer of Germany.
All power was centralised in Hitler's person and his word became the highest law. The government was not a coordinated, co-operating body, but a collection of factions struggling for power and Hitler's favour. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazis restored economic stability and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of Autobahnen; the return to economic stability boosted the regime's popularity. Racism antisemitism, was a central feature of the regime; the Germanic peoples were considered by the Nazis to be the master race, the purest branch of the Aryan race. Discrimination and persecution against Jews and Romani people began in earnest after the seizure of power; the first concentration camps were established in March 1933. Jews and others deemed undesirable were imprisoned, liberals and communists were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. Christian churches and citizens that opposed Hitler's rule were oppressed, many leaders imprisoned.
Education focused on racial biology, population policy, fitness for military service. Career and educational opportunities for women were curtailed. Recreation and tourism were organised via the Strength Through Joy program, the 1936 Summer Olympics showcased Germany on the international stage. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels made effective use of film, mass rallies, Hitler's hypnotic oratory to influence public opinion; the government controlled artistic expression, promoting specific art forms and banning or discouraging others. The Nazi regime dominated neighbours through military threats in the years leading up to war. Nazi Germany made aggressive territorial demands, threatening war if these were not met, it seized Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939. Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR, invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, launching World War II in Europe. By early 1941, Germany controlled much of Europe. Reichskommissariats took control of conquered areas and a German administration was established in the remainder of Poland.
Germany exploited labour of both its occupied territories and its allies. In the Holocaust, millions of Jews and other peoples deemed undesirable by the state were imprisoned, murdered in Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps, or shot. While the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was successful, the Soviet resurgence and entry of the US into the war meant the Wehrmacht lost the initiative on the Eastern Front in 1943 and by late 1944 had been pushed back to the pre-1939 border. Large-scale aerial bombing of Germany escalated in 1944 and the Axis powers were driven back in Eastern and Southern Europe. After the Allied invasion of France, Germany was conquered by the Soviet Union from the east and the other Allies from the west, capitulated in May 1945. Hitler's refusal to admit defeat led to massive destruction of German infrastructure and additional war-related deaths in the closing months of the war; the victorious Allies initiated a policy of denazification and put many of the surviving Nazi leadership on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg trials.
The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945, while common English terms are "Nazi Germany" and "Third Reich". The latter, adopted by Nazi propaganda as Drittes Reich, was first used in Das Dritte Reich, a 1923 book by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck; the book counted the Holy Roman Empire as the German Empire as the second. Germany was known as the Weimar Republic during the years 1919 to 1933, it was a republic with a semi-presidential system. The Weimar Republic faced numerous problems, including hyperinflation, political extremism, contentious relationships with the Allied victors of World War I, a series of failed attempts at coalition government by divided political parties. Severe setbacks to the German economy began after World War I ended because of reparations payments required under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles; the government printed money to make the payments and to repay the country's war debt, but the resulting hyperinflation led to inflated prices for consumer goods, economic chaos, food riots.
When the government defaulted on their reparations payments in January 1923, French troops occupied German industrial areas along the Ruhr and widespread civil unrest followed. The National Socialist German Workers' Party (National
Constantin Karadja
Prince Constantin Jean Lars Anthony Démétrius Karadja was a Romanian diplomat, barrister-at-law, bibliographer and honorary member of the Romanian Academy. He was a member of the Caradja aristocratic family. Constantin was the son of Prince Jean Karadja Pasha and Marie Louise Smith of Sweden, aka Princess Mary Karadja. In 1916 Constantin married a distant relative, Princess Marcela Elena Caradja of Romania, they had two children: Prince Jean Aristide Constantin Georges Caradja, married to Minna Frieda Auguste Starke. Princess Marie–Marcelle Nadèje Karadja. Barrister at law in England with studies at Framlingham College and London, he spoke English, Romanian, French and Norwegian, as well as Latin and Greek. Being a European by education, Constantin Karadja established himself in Romania, he was naturalized and joined the diplomatic service in 1920, serving Romania in missions as consul in Budapest, consul general in Stockholm and Berlin. With additional solid competences in economics, he worked as a counsel in the Ministry of Finances, participated 1927 as chief of the Romanian delegation to the International Economic Conference in Geneva.
He composed a consular manual. Being a passionate bibliophile and collector, Constantin Karadja founded one of the most important collections of old and rare books in South-East Europe, which nowadays can be found in the National Library and the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. Being accredited as consul general in Berlin and in parallel to his diplomatic activities, he continued his research concerning incunabula, realizing in this period the “List of incunabulum on the Romanian territory”, he published important works regarding the ancient history of Romania. Using unknown sources discovered by his own research activities, he released in 1934 his famous work entitled “The oldest sources published on Romanian history”. In 1940 he presented to the Romanian Academy the first mentions of Dacia and the Romanians discovered in two incunabula from 1454 and 1472. More than half of the numerous scientific articles of Constantin Karadja were published in the three journals of Nicolae Iorga; as a result of his activity as bibliographer and researcher, he was admitted as honorary member of the Romanian Academy on the 3 June 1946.
His letter of recommendation was signed by eighteen notable academicians, including Ion Nistor, Alexandru Lapedatu, Dimitrie Pompeiu, Gheorghe Spacu, Emil Racoviţă, Iorgu Iordan, Constantin Ion Parhon, Nicolae Bănescu, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, Ştefan Ciobanu, Radu R. Rosetti, Silviu Dragomir, he was removed from the Academy by the communist regime two years in 1948. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, he was re-established in 1990. Influenced by his humanistic and juridical education, Constantin Karadja followed the principles of international law respecting human rights, he did not cede in front of political pressures, “doctrines” en vogue or potential “opportunities”, but engaged himself with perseverance in the protection of the rights of Romanian citizens living abroad, regardless of ethnicity or religion. As the Romanian consul general in Berlin and the director of the consular department of the Romanian Foreign Ministry, “in both functions, during one and a half decades, Karadja developed an intense activity in order to save Romanian Jews surprised by the war in the kingdom of death”.
“Tens of thousands owe their lives to his exceptional persistency, abnegation and amplitude marking his long-term engagement in favour of the Romanian Jews stranded under the Nazi regime." Yosef Govrin, former Israeli ambassador writes that it "required extraordinary courage to act as he did through diplomatic means" as he was putting his career in consequent jeopardy. Shortly after his dismissal on October 17, 1944, he was re-appointed by the new foreign minister, Constantin Vişoianu. On September 1, 1947 he was dismissed again from the ministry, this time permanently; this was one of the last measures taken by minister Gheorghe Tătărescu, who one month was himself forced to leave his post to Ana Pauker. Subsequently, the payment of Karadja's pension was refused. In an atmosphere of incertitude and menace, he died on December 28, 1950. On 15 September 2005, Constantin Karadja received from the Yad Vashem institute in Jerusalem posthumously the title “Righteous Among the Nations” during a ceremony in the Israeli embassy in Berlin and in presence of the Romanian ambassador.
His diplomatic efforts have been presented in detail on the basis of numerous letters, reports etc. which he sent to his superiors including Mihai Antonescu. These documents can be found in the archive of the Romanian foreign ministry and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C, they are the means by which Karadja saved over 51,000 persons from deportation and extermination—Jews from parts of Europe dominated by the Nazis from Germany and Hungary, but from Greece and Italy. Caradja Eugène Rizo Rangabé, Livre d'Or de la Noblesse Phanariote et de Familles Princières de Valachie et de Moldavie, Athens, 1892 Constantin I. Karadja: „Incunabule povestind despre cruzimile lui Vlad Ţepes“ Cluj, Cartea Românească 1931, în volumul „Inchinare lui Nicolae Iorga cu prilejul împlinirii vârstei de 60 ani“ Constantin I. Karadja: „Alte Bibliotheken der Siebenbürger Sachsen und ihre Wiegendrucke“, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 1941, p. 196–207
Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman and humanitarian. He is remembered for saving tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian Fascists during the stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory. On 17 January 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Red Army, Wallenberg was detained by SMERSH on suspicion of espionage and subsequently disappeared, he was reported to have died on 17 July 1947 while imprisoned by the KGB secret police in the Lubyanka, the KGB headquarters and affiliated prison in Moscow. The motives behind Wallenberg's arrest and imprisonment by the Soviet government, along with questions surrounding the circumstances of his death and his ties to US intelligence, remain mysterious and are the subject of continued speculation; as a result of his successful efforts to rescue Hungarian Jews, Wallenberg has been the subject of numerous humanitarian honours in the decades following his presumed death.
In 1981, US Congressman Tom Lantos, one of those saved by Wallenberg, sponsored a bill making Wallenberg an honorary citizen of the United States, the second person to receive this honour. Wallenberg is an honorary citizen of Canada, Hungary and Israel. Israel has designated Wallenberg one of the Righteous Among the Nations. Numerous monuments have been dedicated to him, streets have been named after him throughout the world; the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of the United States was created in 1981 to "perpetuate the humanitarian ideals and the nonviolent courage of Raoul Wallenberg." It gives the Raoul Wallenberg Award annually to recognize persons. He was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress "in recognition of his achievements and heroic actions during the Holocaust." Wallenberg was born in 1912 in Lidingö Municipality, near Stockholm, where his maternal grandparents, Professor Per Johan Wising and his wife Sophie Wising, had built a summer house in 1882. His paternal grandfather, Gustaf Wallenberg, was a diplomat and envoy to Tokyo and Sofia.
His parents, who married in 1911, were Raoul Oscar Wallenberg, a Swedish naval officer, Maria "Maj" Sofia Wising. His father died of cancer three months before he was born, his maternal grandfather died of pneumonia three months after his birth, his mother and grandmother, now both widows, raised him together. In 1918, his mother married Fredric von Dardel. After high school and his compulsory eight months in the Swedish military, Wallenberg's paternal grandfather sent him to study in Paris, he spent one year there, in 1931, he matriculated at the University of Michigan in the United States to study architecture. Although the Wallenberg family was rich, he worked at odd jobs in his free time and joined other young male students as a passenger rickshaw handler at Chicago's Century of Progress, he used his vacations to explore the United States, with hitchhiking being his preferred method of travel. About his experiences, he wrote to his grandfather saying, "When you travel like a hobo, everything's different.
You have to be on the alert the whole time. You're in close contact with new people every day. Hitchhiking gives you training in diplomacy and tact." Wallenberg was aware of his one-sixteenth Jewish ancestry, proud of it. It came from his great-great-grandfather Michael Benedicks, who immigrated to Stockholm in 1780. Professor Ingemar Hedenius recalls a conversation with Raoul dating back to 1930, when they were together in an army hospital during military service: We had many long and intimate conversations, he was full of plans for the future. Although I was a good deal older – you could choose when to do your service – I was enormously impressed by him, he was proud of his partial Jewish ancestry and, must have exaggerated it somewhat. I remember him saying,'A person like me, both a Wallenberg and half-Jewish, can never be defeated', he graduated from university in 1935, but upon his return to Sweden, he found his American degree did not qualify him to practice as an architect. That year, his grandfather arranged a job for him in Cape Town, South Africa, in the office of a Swedish company that sold construction material.
After six months in South Africa, he took a new job at a branch office of the Holland Bank in Haifa. He returned to Sweden in 1936, securing a job in Stockholm with the help of his uncle and godfather, Jacob Wallenberg, at the Central European Trading Company, an export-import company trading between Stockholm and central Europe, owned by Kálmán Lauer, a Hungarian Jew. Beginning in 1938, the Kingdom of Hungary, under the regency of Miklós Horthy, passed a series of anti-Jewish measures modeled on the so-called Nuremberg Race Laws enacted in Germany by the Nazis in 1935. Like their German counterparts, the Hungarian laws focused on restricting Jews from certain professions, reducing the number of Jews in government and public service jobs, prohibiting intermarriage; because of this, Wallenberg's business associate, Kálmán Lauer, found it difficult to travel to his native Hungary, moving still deeper into the German orbit, becoming a member of the Axis powers in November 1940 and joining the Nazi-led invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Out of necessity Wallenberg became Lauer's personal representative, traveling to Hungary to conduct busin
Odoardo Focherini
Blessed Odoardo Focherini was an Italian Roman Catholic journalist. He issued false documents to Jewish people during World War II in order to escape the Nazi regime but was arrested and sent to a concentration camp where he died. Yad Vashem recognized him as a Righteous Among the Nations in 1969 for his efforts. Focherini's beatification was held on 15 June 2013 in Modena under Pope Francis who had Cardinal Angelo Amato preside over the celebration on his behalf. Odoardo Focherini was born on 6 June 1907 in Modena as the third son to Tobia Focherini and Maria Bertacchini, he had three brothers. Focherini married Maria Marchesi on 9 July 1930 and the couple had seven children together between 1931 and 1943; the children in order of birth were: Olga, Attilio, Gianna and Paola. The couple was to have an eighth child but this could not happen because Focherini was arrested; the couple met while he was on vacation in Trento and the couple became engaged in 1925. On 1 January 1934 he gained work with the Società Assicurazione Cattolica di Verona, an insurance corporation, worked as an agent for the Modena branch.
In 1933 he left his line of work in order to become a journalist and he became the managing director of L'Avvenire d'Italia. A fellow friend and journalist was the Jewish-Italian Giacomo Lampronti. In 1936 he became the diocesan president of Catholic Action. Pope Pius XI awarded him the Order of Saint Sylvester. In 1942 his activism in saving the lives of Jewish people during World War II and the Holocaust first manifested when the first he saved came from Poland on a train to Genoa. On 8 September 1943 he got in touch with people who provided him with blank identification cards with false data and took a group of Jewish people to the border, he issued this fake documentation to them in order for them to escape Nazi persecution to neutral Switzerland and with his priest friend Dante Sala provided documents on one occasion for his friend Lampronti and his relations. He was a friend of the Venerable Teresio Olivelli; the Nazis discovered this covert operation and arrested him at the Carpi Hospital on 11 March 1944 while he organized the escape of Enrico Donati.
On 13 March 1944 he was taken to San Giovanni in Monte prison in Bologna and remained there until 5 July when he was moved to Fossoli. From there Focherini was sent to a labour camp in Bolzano and remained there until 4 August when he was deported to the German state. Focherini sent a total of 166 letters to his wife while in imprisonment; the Nazis sent him to a concentration camp in Hersbruck where he died on 27 December 1944 due to an untreated leg infection while confirmation of his death came on 4 June 1945. His final words were reported as: "I declare that I die in the purest Roman Catholic faith and in full submission to the will of God", he had saved a total of 105 Jewish lives. In 1969 he received posthumous recognition from Yad Vashem for his heroic efforts during the war in saving the lives of countless Jewish people and awarded him the title of Righteous Among the Nations. In 2007 the then-President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano awarded him the Gold Medal for Civil Merit for his heroic actions during World War II.
The beatification cause commenced under Pope John Paul II on 12 February 1996 after he was titled a Servant of God after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued the official "nihil obstat" to the cause and allowed for it to commence on a diocesan level. The C. C. S. Validated this process on 28 May 1999 in Rome; the postulation drafted and submitted the Positio to the C. C. S. in 2003 and it allowed for a board of theologians to approve the cause on 16 October 2007 and for the C. C. S. to do so as well on 3 April 2012. Pope Benedict XVI - on 10 May 2012 - confirmed that Focherini had died "in odium fidei" and thus approved his beatification. Cardinal Angelo Amato presided over the beatification in Modena on 15 June 2013 on the behalf of Pope Francis. Focherini's friend Lampronti attended the beatification; the current postulator for this cause is the Franciscan priest Giovangiuseppe Califano. Hagiography Circle Saints SQPN
Seven Laws of Noah
The Seven Laws of Noah referred to as the Noahide Laws or the Noachide Laws, are a set of imperatives which, according to the Talmud, were given by God as a binding set of laws for the "children of Noah" – that is, all of humanity. According to Jewish tradition, non-Jews who adhere to these laws because they were given by Moses are said to be followers of Noahidism and regarded as righteous gentiles, who are assured of a place in Olam Haba, the final reward of the righteous; the Seven Laws of Noah include prohibitions against worshipping idols, cursing God, murder and sexual immorality, eating flesh torn from a living animal, as well as the obligation to establish courts of justice. According to the Genesis flood narrative, a deluge covered the whole world, killing every surface-dwelling creature except Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives, the animals taken aboard Noah's Ark. According to this, all modern humans are descendants of Noah, thus the name Noahide Laws is referred to the laws that apply to all of humanity.
After the flood, God sealed a covenant with Noah with the following admonitions: Flesh of a living animal: "However, flesh with its life-blood, you shall not eat." Murder and courts: "Furthermore, I will demand your blood, for your lives, I shall demand it from any wild animal. From man too, I will demand of each person's brother the blood of man, he who spills the blood of man, by man his blood shall be spilt. The Book of Jubilees dated to the 2nd century BCE, may include an early reference to Noahide Law at verses 7:20–28: And in the twenty-eighth jubilee Noah began to enjoin upon his sons' sons the ordinances and commandments, all the judgments that he knew, he exhorted his sons to observe righteousness, to cover the shame of their flesh, to bless their Creator, honour father and mother, love their neighbour, guard their souls from fornication and uncleanness and all iniquity. For owing to these three things came the flood upon the earth... For whoso sheddeth man's blood, whoso eateth the blood of any flesh, shall all be destroyed from the earth.
The Jewish Encyclopedia article on Saul of Tarsus states: According to Acts, Paul began working along the traditional Jewish line of proselytizing in the various synagogues where the proselytes of the gate and the Jews met. The article "New Testament" states: For great as was the success of Barnabas and Paul in the heathen world, the authorities in Jerusalem insisted upon circumcision as the condition of admission of members into the church, until, on the initiative of Peter, of James, the head of the Jerusalem church, it was agreed that acceptance of the Noachian Laws—namely, regarding avoidance of idolatry and the eating of flesh cut from a living animal—should be demanded of the heathen desirous of entering the Church. David Novak presents a range of theories regarding the origin of the Noachide laws, including the Bible, Hittite law, the Maccabean period, the Roman period; the seven Noahide laws as traditionally enumerated are the following: Not to worship idols. Not to curse God. To establish courts of justice.
Not to commit murder. Not to commit adultery or sexual immorality. Not to steal. Not to eat flesh torn from a living animal. According to the Talmud, the rabbis agree. However, they disagree on which laws were given to Adam and Eve. Six of the seven laws are exegetically derived from passages in Genesis, with the seventh being the establishing of courts; the earliest complete rabbinic version of the seven laws can be found in the Tosefta where they are listed as follows. Seven commandments were commanded of the sons of Noah: concerning adjudication concerning idolatry concerning blasphemy concerning sexual immorality concerning blood-shed concerning robbery concerning a limb torn from a living animal According to the Talmud, the Noahide Laws apply to all humanity. In Judaism, בני נח B'nei Noah refers to all of humankind; the Talmud states: "Righteous people of all nations have a share in the world to come". Any non-Jew who lives according to these laws is regarded as one of "the righteous among the gentiles".
The rabbis agree. However, they disagree on which laws were given to Adam and Eve. Six of the seven laws are exegetically derived from passages in Genesis; the Talmud adds extra laws beyond the seven listed in the Tosefta which are attributed to different rabbis, such as the grafting of trees and sorcery among others, Ulla going so far as to make a list of 30 laws. The Talmud expands the scope of the seven laws to cover about 100 of the 613 mitzvoth. In practice Jewish law makes it difficult to apply the death penalty. No record exists of a gentile having been put to death for violating the seven laws; some of the categories of capital punishment recorded in the Talmud are recorded as having never been carried out. It is thought that the rabbis included discussion of them in anticipation of the coming messianic age; the Talmud lists the punishment for bl
Rudolf Weigl
Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl was a Polish biologist and inventor of the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus. He founded the Weigl Institute in Lviv. There, during the Holocaust, he harboured Jews, his vaccines were smuggled into the Lwów Ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto, saving countless additional Jewish lives. Weigl was born in Prerau, Moravia part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Austrian-German parents; when he was a child, his father died in a bicycle accident. His mother, Elisabeth Kroesel, married a Polish secondary-school teacher, Józef Trojnar, they raised Weigl in Jasło, Poland; the family moved to Lviv, where in 1907 Weigl graduated from the biology department at the University of Jan Kazimierz, where he had been a pupil of Professors Benedykt Dybowski and J. Nusbaum–Hilarowicz. After graduation, Weigl became Nusbaum's assistant and in 1913 completed his habilitacja in the department of comparative zoology and anatomy, which gave him tenure. After the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Weigl was drafted into the medical service of the Austro-Hungarian army and began research on typhus and its causes.
Weigl worked at a military hospital in Przemyśl, where he supervised the Laboratory for the Study of Spotted Typhus. During the Nazi German occupation of Poland in World War II, Weigl's research attracted the attention of the Nazis; when they occupied Lviv, they ordered him to set up a vaccine production plant at his Institute. About a thousand people worked there. Weigl employed and protected Polish intellectuals and members of the Polish underground, his vaccines were smuggled into ghettos in Lviv and Warsaw, saving countless lives, until the Institute was shut down by the Soviet Union following their 1944 anti-German offensive. In 1945 Weigl moved to Poland, he was appointed Chair of the General Microbiology Institute of Jagiellonian University, Chair of Biology of the Poznań Medical Faculty. Production of the vaccine remained at Kraków for some years until discontinued. Weigl died on 11 August 1957 in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane; the Weigl Institute features prominently in Andrzej Żuławski's 1971 film, The Third Part of the Night.
In 2003, a half-century after his death, Professor Weigl was recognized by Israel as a Righteous among the Nations of the World. In 1930, following Charles Nicolle's 1909 discovery that lice were the vector of epidemic typhus, following the work done on a vaccine for the related Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Weigl took the next step and developed a technique to produce a typhus vaccine by growing infected lice and crushing them into a vaccine paste, he refined this technique over the years until 1933. The method comprised four major steps: Growing healthy lice, for about 12 days. Growing lice meant feeding them the more human the better. At first he tested his method on Guinea pigs, but around 1933 he began large-scale testing on humans, feeding the lice human blood by letting them suck human legs through a screen; this could cause typhus during the latter phase. He alleviated this problem by vaccinating the human "injectees", which protected them from death. Weigl himself developed the disease, but recovered.
The first major application of his vaccine was conducted between 1936 and 1943 by Belgian missionaries in China. The vaccine was dangerous to produce and hard to make on a large scale. Over time, other vaccines were developed that were less dangerous and more economical to produce, including the Cox vaccine developed on egg yolk. Feeder of lice List of Poles Ludwik Fleck Ludwik Hirszfeld, Holocaust survivor Arthur Allen, The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis, Norton, 2014, ISBN 978-0393081015
Poland
Netherlands
France
Ukraine
Belgium
Lithuania
Hungary
Italy
Belarus
Germany
Slovakia
Greece
Russia
Serbia
Latvia
Czech Republic
Croatia
Austria
Moldova
Albania
Norway
Romania
Switzerland
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Armenia
Denmark, 
United Kingdom
Bulgaria
North Macedonia, 
Sweden
Slovenia
Spain
United States
Estonia, 
Turkey, 
Portugal
Brazil, 
Chile, 
Indonesia, 
Peru, 
China
Cuba, 
Ecuador, 
Egypt, 
El Salvador, 
Georgia, 
Ireland, 
Japan, 
Luxembourg, 
Montenegro, 
Vietnam
