The medical community of the interwar period passed the test during World War II. They not only represented professionalism in their field, but also gave many examples of patriotism and empathy in everyday life as well as heroism on the battlefield. Henryk Julian Levittoux, called “Bema” in his family, was born on March 31, 1899 in Rokitno (now Ukraine). He graduated from junior high schools in Kharkov and Kiev. In 1917 he obtained a highschool graduation certificate. He studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev for a year, then from October 1918, he continued his medical studies at the University of Warsaw. His studies were interrupted several times by his participation in the Polish-Bolshevik war. He was the great-grand nephew of the 19th-century Warsaw physician Henryk Józef Piotr Levittoux. On November 11, 1918 he volunteered for the Polish Army. He fought on the Lithuanian-Belarusian Front. He started as a gunner (an equivalent to a private in the infantry) in the 8th Field Artillery Regiment. From April to July 1920, he served in the Staff Department of the Reserve Battalion of the 21st Warsaw Infantry Regiment “Children of Warsaw”, where he was a medic. Then, until October 1920, he served as a doctor in the 205th Infantry Regiment. After the armistice in October 18, 1920, he was assigned to the staff of the Central Military Hospital in Warsaw, later renamed the Ujazdów District Hospital No. 1. From November 1920 to March 1921, he served there as an assistant physician. For the war of 1920 he was awarded the Cross of Valour.
He received his diploma of the Doctor of Medicine on July 3, 1924. He specialized as an orthopaedic surgeon. He was a professional doctor of the Polish Army. From July 1924 to February 1926, he served as the chief physician in the newly formed 4th Aviation Regiment in Toruń. Then, from February 1926 to January 1927, he was a doctor in the 1st Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in the capital. For a short time he served as a doctor in the 1st Division of the Intendant’s Service. On January 1, 1928, he was promoted to the rank of captain. He reached the rank of major on January 1, 1934. He worked at the Mokotów Hospital, to which in 1925 almost the entire District Hospital No. 1 was transferred from Ujazdów. As of March 31, 1927, the Mokotów facility was named Marshal Piłsudski’s District Hospital No. 1. He worked there under the supervision of Professor Adolf Wojciechowski – one of the founders of the Warsaw orthopaedic school and a precursor of sports traumatology. His first teacher and mentor in the art of medicine was Lt. Col. Michał Latkowski, MD, (1882–1930), a lecturer in field surgery at the Medical Officer Cadet School and long-time head of the Surgical Department of the Mokotów Hospital. Levittoux held the following positions there: head, senior head and head of the Department of Bone Surgery (from 1935). From 1936 to 1939 he was an assistant professor at the 2nd Surgical Clinic of the Medical Faculty of the Józef Piłsudski University in Warsaw (currently the University of Warsaw). He lectured on orthopaedics for students of the 5th year of medicine. The audience remembered him as a wonderful academic teacher who showed great kindness towards his students. He also worked at the Radium Institute established in 1932 (currently the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Institute – Oncology Centre). He also saw patients in a private office in his apartment at 78 Polna Street.
Levittoux was a co-founder of the Polish Orthopaedic Association, established in 1928. After the transformation of the association into the Polish Society of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, he became its treasurer, and then its secretary. He was active in the Association of Polish Surgeons. He was an extremely talented military surgeon. His scientific achievements, including several valuable studies in the field of military medicine, were rich and impressive. The tense international situation in the second half of the 1930s resulted in increased interest in military healthcare issues. Polish military scholars discussed the organization of healthcare and sanitary tactics. The problems of military hygiene, war surgery and “medicine of combat poisoning” were discussed. Methods of evacuation and transport of the wounded as well as rules of rescue were developed. Everyone was aware that the next war would be fundamentally different from the previous one. Massive use of aviation was envisaged, which would be able to hit distant targets on an unprecedented scale. Authors of publications prophesied that the coming armed conflict would reveal a new military power in the form of dynamic motorized units and armoured weapons. It was discussed how the health service should react in the event of chemical warfare, and even “bacterial warfare”.
It was Levittoux who was discussing the issue of providing medical aid to the wounded who were shocked by the poison gas. In 1934, he published an article in “Lekarz Wojskowy” (“Military Physician”) entitled The position of a surgeon towards gassed wounded.
Levittoux was also one of the leading Polish authorities in the field of transfusion medicine. In 1933, in “Military Physician” his work On the organization of blood transfusion during the war was published. In it, he proposed that blood should not be collected directly from soldiers at the front, but transported from inside the country or areas surrounding the front, where the so-called haematology units would function.

From spccer to sports medicine

Levittoux became a co-founder of Polish sports medicine. He practiced many sports disciplines himself. He played football, tennis, rode horses and bikes, ran and swam. It was his passion for sports that indirectly influenced his choice of specialization. He opted for orthopaedics after suffering a painful injury while playing football. When he was lying in hospital with an injured knee, he began to explore the knowledge of damage and post-traumatic changes to the musculoskeletal system.
Henryk Levittoux was one of the first to deal with trauma and orthopaedic surgery in athletes. He was one of the most famous organ traumatologists of the interwar period in Poland. He gained his skills under the guidance of Professor Adolf Wojciechowski. In 1936, at the 2nd Surgical Clinic of the Józef Piłsudski University in Warsaw, headed by Wojciechowski, the Sports and Surgical Clinic was established – the first specialist clinic of this type in Poland. In the clinic, which became an important scientific centre in the field of sports traumatology, Levittoux saw his patients and treated them free of charge. His close associate was the surgeon Stanisław Tokarski (1905–1958), a specialist in boxing injuries (co-founder of the clinic). Under the watchful eye of Levittoux, doctor Jerzy Moscow (1923–2006), the future guardian of the national boxing team of Feliks “Papa” Stamm (1901–1976) took his first steps in sports medicine. Levittoux developed an innovative surgical method of treating habitual (repetitive) dislocations of the shoulder joint. In 1936, he discussed it in “Surgery of Movement Organs and Polish Orthopaedics”, an organ of the Polish Society of Orthopaedics and Traumatology (Operation of habitual dislocation of the shoulder joint). The lack of recurrence after the procedures and the fact that the patients did not report any limitation of mobility in the joint later made him consider the method very promising. This method was still used in the 1980s. He dealt with the treatment of soft tissue injuries of the musculoskeletal system of athletes. He conducted scientific research on the pathophysiology of muscle damage and occupational diseases of athletes. He was a member of the Organizing Committee of the Second Scientific Congress of Polish Sports Physicians in Zakopane in February 1939.
Levittoux was the author of numerous studies in the field of physical activity medicine. In 1939, two of his texts, important from the point of view of the researched subject matter, appeared in “Military Physician”: Clinical Forms of Muscle Overtraining and On Occupational Diseases of Athletes. In the first of them, he discussed several forms of muscle overload (fatigue), both in sports and at work. Then he presented the appropriate therapeutic methods for each type of muscle changes described. In the second study, he drew attention to the problem of more and more frequent degenerative changes of individual body parts caused by excessive load in people practicing sports. The reason for this, in his opinion, was the growing popularity of sports with the simultaneous lack of adequate medical care. At the same time, due to the growing number of cases of sports disability (as a result of sports injuries), he postulated the need for adequate insurance for athletes.
He had many friends in the sports community. In 1935, he operated on the famous footballer player Ernest Wilimowski (1916–1997). Janusz “Kusy” Kusociński (1907–1940), a multiple Polish champion and record holder in running, and winner of the gold medal at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics owed his recovery to Levittoux. He personally looked after the athlete in a difficult period after his knee injury recurred. At that time, Kusociński lived in the Royal Łazienki Park. As a gesture of recognition of the athlete’s merits, the Polish authorities offered him a place in the Hunting Palace and a relaxing job as a gardener. “Kusy” eagerly took advantage of the benefits and charms of the palace and garden complex. He trained running along park alleys until old injuries recurred. Edward Trojanowski (Bohdan Tomaszewski’s mentor), an athlete and sports journalist, years later recalled that when Kusociński withdrew from sport due to his knee injury. He was seeking oblivion in alcohol and gambling. The person who tried to keep his spirits up and “pull him out of this hole” was “Dr. Levittoux – an excellent surgeon, a miracle worker, a specialist in sensational knee surgeries at that time”. It was Levittoux who frequently visited Kusociński’s apartment in Łazienki. He cared for him as for his own son. Eventually, he managed to persuade Kusociński to undergo surgery. In March 1936, he removed his meniscus and the inflamed bursa in the left knee joint. Stefan Kisielewski (1911–1991), a prose writer and publicist, mentioned this successful surgery, carried out by a “military physician, Doctor Levittoux” in Abecadło Kisiela (Kisiel’s Alphabet). In turn, Bohdan Tomaszewski (1921–2015), the legend of Polish sports journalism, said in one of his interviews that “Kusy was saved by Dr. Henryk Levittoux, the most famous Polish surgeon. Thanks to him, «Kusy» returned to competition and in 1939 he won the race at the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin”5. Soon, the famous runner began to regain his form. Prospects of new sporting successes appeared before the outstanding long-distance runner. The Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1940 were approaching. Unfortunately, the war stood in the way. Arrested by the Germans for participating in the conspiracy, Kusociński was executed near Palmiry. Another person under the care of Levittoux was the European and Polish boxing champion Henryk Chmielewski (1914–1998), a member of the company’s sports club IKP-Łódź (Fabryki Izraela Kalmanowicza Poznańskiego [Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznański’s Factories] in Łódź).
Aviation was Levittoux’s other passion. He completed a flying course at the Warsaw Aeroclub. He wore, in his lapel, the official badge of Polish pilots (the so-called gapa). Levittoux was a member of the Military Aviation and Medical Commission established at the Aviation and Medical Research Centre in Warsaw (CBL-L), commonly known as “Cebula”. He issued rulings on the fitness to serve in the air by pilots and candidates for pilots. He operated on many wounded airmen. The most common surgeries concerned severe and complicated post-accident fractures. When he was called to an injured pilot who had crashed outside Warsaw, he boarded the plane and flew to the scene.
A well-known military pilot, Bolesław Orliński, was under the medical care of Levittoux. In 1932, during the test flight of the new PZL P.7 plane, Orliński had a machine failure. He had to eject. He landed so badly that he suffered a serious fracture of the lower limb. Rychter reported that the pilot’s recovery was supervised by “a phenomenal surgeon, Dr. Levittoux, sworn lifeguard of all aviators”. The doyen of Polish aviation, Count Michał Scipio del Campo (1887–1984), was also a patient of Levittoux. He came from an old Polonized Italian family. He went down in history as the first Pole to fly over Warsaw by plane. He did so in 1911 against the tsarist authorities’ ban. The engineer and test pilot had already had several accidents before being treated by Levittoux. He suffered many fractures, wounds and bruises. Henry Levittoux had operated on him before the war after one of those air accidents.

War and Soviet captivity

On September 2, 1939, Major Dr. Henryk Levittoux left with the military hospital for Kowel. Then he travelled towards Brest. Battles in defence of the Brest Fortress against the Germans lasted from the 14th to 16th of September (40% of the garrison died then). After the fall of the citadel, the Germans handed over the city along with the Polish prisoners of war to the Russians, who invaded Poland on September 17, 1939. In the meantime, Levittoux was captured by the Soviets and ended up in Brest. Seriously wounded (on September 9) in the Battle of Brańszczyk, Lieutenant Władysław Chudy (1906–1995), the commander of the 4th Company of the 134th Infantry Regiment, described his stay in Brest at that time in the account In the Soviet prison in Brest on the Bug River. There he mentions the energetic activities of Levittoux, the “famous Warsaw surgeon”, who immediately began to set up a military hospital and provided medical aid for the wounded in the fortress. Levittoux, as the highest-ranking medic, served as the “chief hospital”. With the help of mechanics, he reactivated the X-ray machine. Thanks to the repaired device, he was able to start his first treatments. He removed pieces of clothing from Lt. Chudy’s wounds and located bullet fragments lodged in his back and shin. He operated on the knee joint of Lt. Col. Bolesław Ciechanowski (1897–1940), commander of the 64th Infantry Regiment, whose kneecap was shattered by a bullet in the Battle of the Osa River (September 1, 1939). He probably would have saved Capt. Jerzy Czarniecki (1904–1939), founder and player of the youth sports club Lechia Kielce, who suffered a lower limb wound on September 11 in the Battle of Osiek, but on October 8, 1939, the Russians took Levittoux away. Gangrene set in the wound and Czarniecki – the highest scorer of pre-war Lechia – died. Several other doctors were also deported from the Brest Fortress. The Russians summoned them and announced that they were returning home as inhabitants of the territories occupied by the Germans. It was a lie. At least two, including Levittoux, were transported to the camp in Starobilsk. The camp in Starobilsk was considered the worst of all three special camps of the NKVD. It was located a few kilometres from the Moscow-Donbass railway station in a devastated former nunnery. According to some accounts, all the local nuns were murdered there during the Bolshevik revolution. Polish officers who survived recalled that human bones and skulls protruded from the ground in many places in the camp. There were traces of bullets on the walls, indicating that numerous executions had been carried out there.
In October 1939, a decision was made that the camp would become a place of isolation only for professional officers and the reserve of the Polish Army. Privates and non-commissioned officers were deported from there by the end of the year. The number of the imprisoned officers was about 4,000 people.
Doctors were one of the most active and distinctive groups in the camp. In total, 375 doctors stayed in Starobilsk, including 34 pharmacists. Among them were both health officers and reservists. The detained doctors represented all three medical sciences – medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine. Among them were representatives of various medical specialties, well-known Warsaw surgeons, world-renowned paediatricians and outstanding university professors. They held separate lectures on the “psychology of captivity” and how to survive in harsh conditions. Henry Levittoux stood out among them with his attitude. In the preserved Starobilsk memoirs, he appears as a brave, operative, energetic person, and at the same time natural, kind and witty.
Despite many adversities and unfavourable conditions, Levittoux continued his mission of healing and saving lives in the camp. It turned out to be necessary because the Soviet authorities did not provide the prisoners with proper medical care. The prisoners were not even quarantined. Weakened people suffered from various health ailments. At first, the Russians blocked Polish attempts to provide medical aid. They falsely justified it with the lack of medications and basic medical equipment. In the end, however, they agreed to the organization of camp healthcare by Polish doctors. Levittoux became the sanitary chief on behalf of the Polish command of the camp. He gathered a team of doctors-specialists who, with great dedication, helped the sick and needy. In a wooden barrack renovated by Poles at the entrance gate, an infirmary and a clinic were organized. The Red Cross flag flew over the building. The hospital room was located in two insulated rooms and a corridor, and the clinic in a large single room with a veranda. The patients had 15 metal beds at their disposal (in February 1940 there were 22), mattresses made of paper bags with wet straw, clean bedding and underwear, and a bathtub (with holes). There was also a “dentist’s office” and a physiotherapy corner with a sollux lamp. They were on duty 24 hours a day.
Lieutenant Res. Dr. Julian Gruner (1898–1940), surgeon and paediatrician, head of the children’s ward at the Przemysław II Hospital in Kalisz, assistant at the Department of Anatomy of the University of Warsaw, chief physician of the medical train of the 1st District Hospital in Warsaw; Lt. Col. Jan Boroń (1889–1940), internist, senior head of the 10th District Hospital in Przemyśl, and Capt. Dr. Kazimierz Wolfram (1900–1940), surgeon from the 1st District Hospital in Warsaw cooperated with Levittoux.
The doctors-prisoners had their hands full. In December 1939 alone, 4,714 prisoners benefited from outpatient care. In January 1940, 3,854 people came to the outpatient clinic. Immunization against typhus and smallpox was carried out. The first round of immunization took place in October 1939 in the square in front of the infirmary. By February 1940, all prisoners had been immunized. In the camp, mainly skin diseases, diseases of the digestive system, influenza, pulmonary tuberculosis, pneumonia, vitamin deficiency and head lice were treated. Those suffering from dysentery were treated with the only available drug – saving tanalbina. Rheumatic diseases and eye ailments were also dealt with. Basic dental care was provided. Surgical procedures were performed.
Dr. Levittoux was recalled by cavalry captain res. count Józef Czapski in his memoirs. The Polish painter and artist was mobilized to the 8th Cavalry Regiment of Prince Józef Poniatowski. On September 27, in Chmielek (Lublin Voivodeship), he fell into the hands of the Russians. Czapski stayed in Starobielsk from the beginning of October 1939 to May 12, 1940. He dodged a bullet to the head by the intervention of influential personalities. Representatives of European aristocratic families asked the German embassy to claim the count whose family came from Pomerania, and the oldest ancestors used the German surname Hutten (from German Hut – cap). Czapski, in his Memories of Starobielsk, written while in exile, described the history of imprisoned Poles adopting dogs that simply clung to the prisoners. Each barrack had its pet. The dogs growled and barked at every guard who approached the barracks, thus warning the Poles. They must have sensed the approaching danger. The Russians were ordered not to let animals into the camp. Therefore, they shot at them, threw stones or beat them with sticks. This is what Czapski recalled:
In Starobielsk we had a shaggy black dog among our very large crowd of friends. Once an NKVD soldier kicked him so hard that he broke his leg. A great Warsaw surgeon, Levitoux, took him under his care, put a splint on him and cured the dog’s leg completely. The Bolsheviks pointed out to him that there was a war today and that it was not the time to be concerned with such nonsense, but Levitoux was not fooled and even tried to explain to them that the dog should be taken care of as well.

Death in Kharkiv

In the family home of Barbara Levittoux-Świderska, there is the last postcard that Henryk Levittoux managed to send to his wife from the camp. The postcard with the emblem of the USSR bears the date November 28, 1939. There were no more messages. In April 1943, the family began to fear the worst. At that time, the Germans, who had been at war with the USSR since June 1941, issued an official radio announcement about the discovery of mass graves of Polish officers murdered by the Soviet political police near Smolensk, in Katyn.
In total, about 3,800 prisoners from Starobilsk were killed. Among those murdered was Henryk Levittoux, prisoner number 2023. For nearly half a century, the closest family of Henryk Levittoux did not know where his remains were buried. The Russians almost immediately began to cover up any traces of the crime. In October 1940, all the documentation of the Starobilsk archive was burned. In 1941, under the pressure of the German army, the NKVD prison in Kharkiv was blown up. The area where the victims were buried was fenced with barbed wire. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, the burials were destroyed with the use of huge drills, making it much more difficult to later identify the bodies. The graves were also disturbed by local people, who searched for valuables among the graves. The place where the bodies of the prisoners of the camp in Starobilsk were buried was revealed only in 1990. A year later, the first exhumation works began. Archaeological research and inspection have finally shown that 4,302 bodies of Poles are buried in the forest in Piatykhatky. Between 1999 and 2000, the Cemetery of Victims of Totalitarianism was established there, with fifteen Polish mass graves and sixty graves with the remains of citizens of Soviet Ukraine (also victims of the NKVD). There are epitaph plaques on both sides of the main cemetery alley. Among them there is one commemorating Henryk Levittoux, a man who always helped people and did not renounce his country and honour. In a letter of December 31, 1997, the secretary general of the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites, Andrzej Przewoźnik, informed Henryk Levittoux’s daughter that during the exhumation works in Kharkov, no objects that could be identified as belonging to Maj. Henryk Levittoux were found. On November 9-10, 2007, the Katyn We Remember – Let’s Celebrate the Memory of Heroes ceremony took place at the Marshal Józef Piłsudski Square in Warsaw. In two days, 14,000 names of the victims of the “Katyn crime” were read. During the ceremony, promotions to higher military and service ranks of all murdered officers, police officers and state officials were announced. Henryk Levittoux received the rank of lieutenant colonel posthumously.

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