Foiled

Dr. Matulewicz wasn’t sure his trick would work, but it was the only chance to save his friend. If the Nazis found out, the penalty would be death. It was worth the risk.

In 1942, physician Stanislaw Matulewicz was working for the Polish Red Cross in the rural villages of Rozwadow and Zbydniowie, about 150 miles from Warsaw. After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, launching World War II, hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens, many just in their teens, had been rounded up to provide slave labor for German factories, railroads, mines, and farms. Tens of thousands died of exhaustion and starvation in the labor camps. Polish Jews were taken to special concentration camps, either to be exterminated immediately or worked to death. Now, in 1942, Dr. Matulewicz’s friend had