Tadeusz Orzeszko was born in 1907 in Tashkent. He received his medical diploma in Warsaw in 1933. He was a member of the Polish underground movement from the start of World War 2. He aided victims of military activities, collected intelligence data and supplied partisans with medicine as part of the clandestine health care system. In 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz where he became a surgeon in Block 21 and helped prisoners. He was liberated in Mauthausen.
„To keep a patient in the hospital until he recovered fully,(...) we had to produce fabricated records and present another patient to the SS physician, or resort to such methods as the administration of an injection of milk to induce afever (... ). There was a high mortality rate. So, every life we managed to save was even more invaluable.”
Translated from original article: Tadeusz Orzeszko, “Relacja chirurga zobozu oświęcimskiego.”Przegląd Lekarski – Oświęcim, 1971.
Source of the photo: Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Polish Righteous Portal