The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl ― How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis

Few diseases are more gruesome than typhus. Transmittedby body lice, it afflicts the desperate: refugees, soldiers,and ghettoized peoples. The Nazis, who equated the lousewith “parasitic, subhuman” Jews, so feared the diseasethat they granted special status to an eccentric Polish scientistnamed Rudolf Weigl, the only one who could make aneffective vaccine. In his laboratory, Weigl hid members of theintelligentsia, protecting them from the Gestapo. Employingmathematicians, writers, doctors, and other thinkers, Weigl’slab became an epicenter of intellectual activity and resistance.Among Weigl’s assistants was Ludwik Fleck, a gifted Jewishimmunologist later sent to Buchenwald, where he deceivedthe Nazis and undermined their sadistic medical trials. Drawingon extensive research and interviews with survivors,Arthur Allen tells a harrowing story of two brave scientists,a Christian and a Jew, shattered by the war, who neverthelessput their training to the best possible use, at the highestpersonal risk.