The doctors did not actually make their patient sick, of course. That would be unthinkable to them, even in the most dire circumstances. The typhus epidemic that they brought to Rozwadów was instead their own unique spin on “faking sick,” a concocted outbreak meant to shield their patients and neighbors from persecution. The doctors had saved the man's life by giving him a simulacrum of the disease, and by giving the same shot to many others in the area, they would save thousands more. [...]
The doctors worked in secret and didn’t even tell their patients what they were doing, and only revealed their scheme to the world in 1977 in an article for the American Society for Microbiology’s newsletter. They were also careful to mimic the ebb and flow of real epidemics, giving more injections and creating more “typhus” cases in the winter and fall. To throw the authorities off, they referred some of their injected patients to other doctors, who would diagnose and report the typhus infections on their own. [...]
The doctors’ lies were almost revealed by the lack of deaths. With a typhus epidemic supposedly raging in the Rozwadów area, the Nazis began to wonder why more people weren’t dying there, and an informant suggested that the outbreak was not what it appeared to be. A team of German doctors was sent to the town to investigate.
Lazowski greeted the visitors with a spread of Polish foods and vodkas. While the senior German doctors sat down to the feast, their underlings toured the town with the doctor. Before their visit, Lazowski had gathered his most unhealthy-looking patients, all of whom had been injected with Proteus bacteria, together in a dirty room. Scared of infection, the young doctors gave the building and patients that Lazowski showed them only a cursory glance. After doing a few blood tests to confirm the epidemic, they quickly left. Their supervisors presumably enjoyed the vodka enough not to double-check.
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