Marek Vronsky "The Riddle of Professor Grzybowski's Death"

Author: Marek Wroński Genre: Nonfiction First edition: 2004 Medical topic: history of medicine   Description: In December 1949, Marian Grzybowski, an eminent professor of dermatology at the University of Warsaw, died in the dungeons of the Ministry of Public Security. One of the most distinguished members of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Warsaw at the time. A highly regarded dermatologist—both domestically and internationally. A wonderful man, physician, and scientist. It is his name that was given to a variant of spiny-cell carcinoma, well known to all students and physicians. According to the official account, he committed suicide. A young assistant to the professor, Dr. Stefania Jabłońska (author of a well-known textbook and a future luminary of Polish dermatology), was allegedly involved in his death; she took over the chair almost immediately and in an unprecedented move following his death. The investigation conducted between 1991 and 1996 by the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish Nation was discontinued. Few people in the medical community attempted to uncover the true cause of death. Some of them had been intimidated for many years by the communist apparatus of terror and remained silent. A few, however, tried to seek the truth. How did the professor die? What role did Prof. Stefania Jabłońska play in his death? What shadows does her brilliant career conceal? Marek Wroński attempts to answer these questions, while revealing the brutal truth about postwar Poland, the collapse of authority, careerism, and the ambitions that unleash the worst instincts in people.