Obituaries

Janusz Bardach

A plastic surgeon who survived imprisonment in the Siberian gold mines

Janusz Bardach was forced to dig his grave and sleep in it the night before a court martial, where conviction was certain. He escaped death, survived years in Stalin's gulag, and became a famous plastic and reconstructive surgeon. He developed innovative techniques for cleft lip and palate repair, working in Poland and then in the United States as head of the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Iowa's Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City.

Dr Bardach was born into a Jewish family in Odessa, Russia, in 1919. A year later his father moved the family back to his native Poland. When Bardach was a young man, newly married to his high school sweetheart, the second world war broke out. Poland was overrun and he was conscripted into the Red Army. An incident driving a tank and outspoken comments about politics led to the court martial.

On the way to execution an officer of the NKVDthe Communist secret policepulled him aside. He asked where Bardach was from and for details about his family in Odessa. Then the officer said, "I grew up next door to your cousin." Convinced that Bardach was truthful and loyal, the officer got his sentence reduced to 10 years' hard labour in Siberian goldmines. "You have a better chance of surviving in labour camps than I do on the front," he said.

"He was lucky his whole life," says Kathleen Gleeson, who co-wrote two books with Dr Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag (University of California Press, 1998), and Surviving Freedom, to be published in spring 2003.

In the Kolyma prison mines, Bardach suffered cold, hunger, and brutality. After a truck incident in which many prisoners died, he convinced hospital staff that he was a medical student because he knew Latin and had learned medical terminology from his father, who was a dentist, and physician relatives. He talked his way into a job at the hospital. After the war his sentence was reduced and he was freed. Meanwhile, his young wife and his entire family, except for his brother, had been killed by the Germans.

Bardach talked his way into medical school in Moscow without taking exams and received a scholarship from the Polish government. He completed medical studies and a residency in plastic and reconstructive surgery.

For 18 years Dr Bardach practised in Lodz, Poland, specialising in maxillofacial surgery. He developed a two-flap technique for repairing a cleft lip that reduced the number of operations that children had to undergo, and techniques for lengthening the upper lip. He published textbooks and papers, though not in Western journals. However, as a Jew he experienced anti-Semitism in Poland.

In 1968, when many intellectuals were leaving Poland, doctors from the University of Iowa College of Medicine learnt of his work at an international meeting. The medical school, which had an expert division in cleft lip and palate surgery, was looking for a new chair. Dr Bardarch was invited for three months as a visiting professor and then asked to stay permanently. The question was how to get his second wife, Elena, and their daughter, Ewa, out of Poland. The university invited them for a "vacation," the Polish government granted visas, and they arrived in middle America. Elena later returned to Poland and died there. Dr Bardach married Phyllis Harper.

Dr Bruce Gantz, chair of otolaryngology at the university in Iowa, says: "I met him as a medical student and worked with him as a resident and a faculty member. I wanted to emulate him as a physician. Kids he'd cared for would jump on his lap as if he were a grandfather." After working with him on scientific papers, Dr Gantz suggested, "Why don't you write about something else?"

The result, Man is Wolf to Man, received a spectacular review from the New York Times. Dr Bardach's colleagues were amazed to hear his life story. "He was someone with tremendous courage and insight," says Dr Robert Kelch, dean of the University of Iowa College of Medicine. His cardiologist, Dr Richard Kerber, says, "He had tremendous warmth and compassion and a lack of bitterness and rage."

He leaves his wife, Phyllis Harper; a daughter; and a granddaughter.

Janusz Bardach, plastic surgeon Iowa City, USA (b Odessa, Russia, 1919; q Moscow Medical and Stomatological Institute 1950), died from pancreatic cancer on 16 August 2002.

[Janice Hopkins Tanne ]