The oldest mention of the Sadzawka family in Płock dates back to 1810 – on June 22, in the Płock Notarial Office, a purchase contract was concluded for the sale of part of the property located at Synagogalna Street (mortgage number 39) between Józef Markus […]
Jehuda Lejb Margolies (1787-1811) – son of Asher Zelig, was a rabbi who at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries managed the spiritual life of the Jewish community in Płock. Before 1793 he was a rabbi in Szczebrzeszyn, Włocławek and Bodzanów. He was […]
Maurycy Markusfeld (1849-1900) – sworn lawyer in Płock in 1889-1900. He was the son of a respected doctor of medicine and the first doctor of the St. Valentine hospital in Kutno in the years 1844-1850, Samuel Stanisław Markusfeld (1810-1880) and Emilia née Lewensztajn. Maurycy Markusfeld graduated from the Faculty of Law at the Imperial University of Warsaw. He received the position of a sworn lawyer in Płock at the beginning of 1889 (previously he was a judge in Lipno). Markusfeld’s office was located on the corner of Kolegialna St., in the house of Jan and Eugenia Rostalski. The wife of Maurycy Markusfeld was Maria née Topolski.
Beniamin Koryto (born 1802, Sochaczew) and Tyla nee Sierota (born 1804, Służewo) were the first of the Koryto family to settle down in Płock (more about the Koryto family – link). Israel (born 1847), one of their sons, married Gitla Tauba nee Szmiga (born 1854). […]
Maksymilian Eljowicz (1890-1942) – painter, born in Raciąż as the son of the craftsman Chaim Pinkas. At the beginning of the 20th century, his family moved to Płock. Here Maximilian started studying, then working in a watchmaker’s workshop. Since an early age he showed outstanding […]
Dr Roman (Rywen) Pakuła was the son of Mojżesz Aron and Enta, his family lived at 4 Grodzka Street in Płock. Below we publish two texts devoted to this extraordinary citizen of Płock and a valued scientist.
Doctor Roman Pakuła – a biographical sketch prepared by his colleagues at the Department of Microbiology at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Roman Pakuła was associated with the Department of Microbiology of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto between July 1966 and June 1982. He was born in Płock, Poland on January 10, 1910 and died in Toronto on September 19, 1986. He is survived by his wife Zofia, a retired physician, and by his son Andrew, a management and applied social research consultant.
During 1931-1937, with the assistance of scholarships for gifted students, Roman began his life-long career as a biological scientist at the University of Warsaw. He elected to specialize in microbiology, a choice which kept him at the forefront of biological and medical research throughout his lifetime. He was awarded his Master of Philosophy degree in 1937. His research thesis was entitled “Morphology and physiology of two strains of Azotobacter vinelandii. Nitrogen fixation and saccharose uptake”.
Roman began his doctoral studies in 1937. Following the September 1, 1939 German invasion of Poland, which launched World War II, he fled to the western region of the Soviet Union, where he continued his Ph. D. studies at the University of Cazimir in Lwow. In 1941, when the U.S.S.R. was invaded by the Germans, Roman was drafted into the Russian army. He fought with them throughout the war and participated in the decisive battle of Stalingrad, now known as Volgograd. For one year after the war, Roman remained in Stalingrad as a lecturer in the Medical School.
In 1946 Roman returned to Warsaw to Zofia Graubart (the biogram of Zofia Graubart Pakuła can be found here – link), whom he had married in January of 1940. He resumed his interrupted Ph.D. studies and at the same time taught biology and chemistry during 1946-1948. He defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled “Extraction of the T antigen from Streptococcus pyogenes” in June of 1950. In 1953 he earned the degree of Dozent in Science through the Medical School at the University of Warsaw. The title of his thesis was “The polysaccharides of hemolytic Streptococci. Analysis by precipitation and agglutination methods”.
In 1954 Dr. Pakula began his professorial career when he received the title of Professor at the University of Warsaw. Between 1953 and 1964 he was Head of the Department of Microbiology at the Medical School where he taught Bacterial Genetics. In 1948 he had been named Director of the Streptococcal and Staphylococcal Reference Laboratories at the State Institute of Hygiene, a post which he retained until he left Poland.
The esteem in which Dr. Pakula was held by his colleagues, and his outstanding contributions to microbiology, bacteriology, serology and the molecular biology which was beginning to emerge, was attested by his appointment to the Polish Academy of Science. He was Secretary of its Microbiological Committee between 1953 and 1964. During 1962-1964, Dr. Pakula was Head of the newly established Laboratory of Bacterial Genetics of the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In 1949-1950 he was a Fellow of the World Health Organization and worked at the Central Public Health Laboratories at Colindale in the north of London, England. Dr. Pakula’s international reputation was by now assured and between 1949 and 1964 he visited many research institutions throughout the world to describe his revolutionary research in genetic transformation of bacteria. Because of his expertise, he was appointed to the International Subcommittee for Phage Typing of Staphylococci and to the International Subcommittee for Streptococci and Pneumococci.
The summer of 1962 was a germinal one for Dr. Pakula and the University of Toronto. He attended the International Congress of Genetics in Montreal where he was approached by the Director of the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories (CMRL) about the possibility of his coming to that institution. And indeed, in 1964 Dr. Pakula was officially invited by Dr. J. K. W. Ferguson to come to CMRL as a Visiting Fellow. This he did and remained as a Research Associate at their Dufferin Division between March, 1964 and June, 1966, at which time he was named Associate Professor of the Department of Microbiology, then at the School of Hygiene at the University of Toronto. On July 1, 1967 Dr. Pakula became a Full Professor and five years later was named Acting Department Chair. He retained that post until his retirement in July 1, 1975, then continued to teach graduate courses on a part-time basis for seven years.
Dr. Pakula had a wonderful sense of humour and a zest for life which made him a brilliant raconteur and therefore an outstanding teacher at the podium and at the laboratory bench. His love and respect for human beings shone forth at every turn. Without even trying, he transmitted to his colleagues the ever-present curiosity, joy and excitement in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, which are the hallmarks of a great scientist and a great humanitarian. Throughout his career he lectured to students of fundamental science, medicine, nursing and pharmacy. Dr. Pakula’s most enduring legacy to the university was his elevation of the Department of Microbiology to one which was fully engaged in all the activities of an academic science-based department, which also was to have an impact on medicine and health in all subdisciplines of microbiology. He placed special emphasis on the intellectual endeavors of science and the requirements of professorial teachers to inspire and encourage the development of the next generation of Canadian scientists. Thus he devoted considerable efforts to the supervision of graduate students.
To do him honour, Dr. Pakula’s family and his colleagues established the DR. Roman Pakula Award given annually to the best M.Sc. student in the Department of Medical Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Toronto.
Presentation by Andrew Pakula, Roman Pakula Award, Microbiology Department, March 29, 1996
Because of the time and place of his birth, my father’s life was profoundly effected by powerful and destructive forces of history – war, hatred, racism, fascism and communism. His survival and even more so his success as a scientist were very much against the odds. After his graduate studies were interrupted by World War II, he became a soldier in the army that defeated the Nazis under conditions of unimaginable hardship.
In Poland and in other communist countries after the war, the sciences, particularly the biological sciences, were corrupted by the mad ravings of Stalin and his henchmen trying to subvert truth in the name of totalitarian ideology. The Lamarckian ideas about the inheritance of acquired characteristics, expressed by Lysenko and others of his ilk, were the enforced “truth”. My father, unconcerned about the risks, spoke up against such nonsense and supported fellow scientists who were victimized by the regime. He believed that science without utmost integrity was not worth much.
He took enormous pleasure in his work as a teacher and a researcher. I recall going to his lab as a child and being struck by the sheer joy showing on his face. He was fond of saying – “I am so lucky to be getting paid for my hobby”. Although he was a hard taskmaster, his students liked and admired him for his knowledge, his abilities as a teacher and a story teller, and his great sense of humour. I am very grateful to him for teaching me to be curious about the world. More than anything, he was a scientist. He admired and aspired to excellence and so he would have been very proud to be associated with this award.
Texts (originally published on zchor.org) and photos courtesy of Andrew Pakuła.
Jakub Zysman (1861-1926) – a doctor and social worker, called “doctor Judym from Klimontów” (a reference to the character from the novel “Homeless People” by Stefan Żeromski), was born in Zakroczym as the son of Hersz Ber Zysman and Łaja nee Przysucher. In the 1870s, […]
Symcha Guterman (Symcha’s biogram can be found here – link) was born on September 1, 1903 in Warsaw, as the son of the talmudist Menachem Mendel (born ca. 1870) and Bajla Gitla née Fiszman (born ca. 1872). His mother came from a wealthy family from […]
Zofia Pakuła née Graubart was the daughter of Abram Nusen aka Natan (born in 1886) and Chaja (born in 1891). She had an older sister Jadwiga (born in 1918). The Graubard family lived at 8 Sienkiewicza St. Natan Graubard was a grain merchant, owner of a seed store and an estate at 42 Kwiatka St. Read the story of Zofia Pakuła, who survived the war and became a respected doctor, written by her son Andrew:
How much adversity can a person face and still triumph? Zofia Graubart Pakula was born in a Jewish home in Płock, Poland on December 13, 1919. She lost her mother at birth. It was because of this enormous tragedy that she had always wanted to become a physician and heal people. While other little girls played with their dolls, she pretended to operate and put bandages on hers. On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, and like many others, Zofia, her father, stepmother, two stepbrothers, and her fiancé, a graduate student of microbiology, Roman Pakula (the biogram of Roman Pakuła – link), fled to the east. They settled in Lwów, a formerly Polish city absorbed by the Soviet Union. Zofia and Roman married on January 10, 1940.
After Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941, Lwów was no longer safe. Sadly, Zofia’s father’s family could not escape and were murdered by the Nazis. Roman was conscripted into the Soviet army and fought in several battles including the decisive one in Stalingrad. Zofia, armed with the fluent knowledge of German and false papers in the name of Pakulska, chose to take her chances and return to Warsaw. What great irony it was that the language she once loved, the language of Heine, Goethe, and Schiller, became the language of those who had murdered her family, but also greatly helped her to survive the war.
Under Nazi occupation, businesses belonging to Jews and later Poles were confiscated and given to Polish citizens of German background. With her excellent German, Zofia found a job as an administrator in a hosiery factory. Her life in Warsaw was a nightmare. She was always hungry and looked in the windows of bakeries and imagined eating the bread she could not afford. She saw Jews being captured and killed. She saw a young Jewish boy killed by a Nazi who repeatedly smashed his head against a wall. In possession of a life-giving “P” patch, for Pole, rather than the deadly yellow Star of David J, for Jew, she spent every waking moment in fear of being found out. How incredibly brave she was.
Things were very difficult and then, unbelievably, in the fall of 1943, they got worse. Someone from Płock, driven solely by unreasoned hate, saw Zofia with her “P” and, deciding that she did not deserve to live, informed the Gestapo. She never found out who it was. Luck intervened as Zofia was at work when the Gestapo came looking for her. At the time she was staying with two women whose husbands, former Polish army officers, were in Auschwitz. The women gave the Nazis a completely misleading description of her appearance. Thankfully unaware that her life was in peril, she came home passing by the two Germans waiting nearby. Once inside, her friends advised her to leave Warsaw, to hide out in a nearby forest, and, once there, to find the place where she could contact the Resistance. She spent more than two weeks in the forest, a young woman all alone, fearful, starving, assuming her husband and family are gone forever.
The Resistance told Zofia that she should go to the railroad station and volunteer for the German war effort. As the Nazis were great record keepers, she was advised to change the destination she would be assigned and provided with an eraser and a pencil to do so. She erased Munich and put Vienna instead. In Vienna, she did back breaking work and, together with a group of women, mostly Greek, she did her best to sabotage the German war effort. She continued to starve. When the Soviet Army liberated Vienna in the spring of 1945 women tried to look and dress old so as not to be raped. Although finally safe, she suffered a nearly fatal case of typhus. She remembered a Red Cross medic waving his hand to indicate that she would not make it.
Zofia had never thought to mention one incident that came to light some time after the war. Roman found out when a package arrived from Vienna containing a beautiful antique ornament and letter from a man thanking Zofia for saving his life. He had been an elderly janitor at the factory where she worked and was as helpful as possible to the starving workers. After liberation, a Soviet soldier saw a German man and he aimed his rifle. Zofia placed herself in front of the man and then a Soviet officer interfered.
Back in Poland after the war, the grievous loss of her family came together with the joy of Roman’s survival and the news that sister Jadzia was safe in Palestine. Zofia was now determined to follow her dream to become a physician. When circumstances permitted, she entered medical school in Warsaw and graduated in 1959, specializing in rheumatology. The first time a patient of hers died she cried and cried. There were always flowers and chocolates from grateful patients. In 1963 she spent nearly a year in Paris doing research on rheumatic heart disease in children, working and living in French.
In 1964, Roman, who was well respected in his field, had an offer from the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories in Toronto. Soon after, he joined the University of Toronto Department of Microbiology as a Professor and later as Acting Department Chair. A few months later, Zofia and son Andrew joined him in Canada. To get her license to practice medicine in Canada Zofia had to pass a series of strenuous exams in a new language. In her mid forties, she went through more than two years of tough medical residencies, sometimes working twenty four hour shifts together with people twenty years younger. At the time, fewer than half of foreign trained physicians completed the stringent requirements. She changed the focus of her practice to work with the developmentally challenged and their families and took a job with the Surrey Place Centre. In addition, she provided psychiatric evaluations for about three hundred Holocaust survivors assessing their loss of earning ability due to Nazi persecution. Her reports were used by the German government to determine the size of pensions to be paid to the victims. There were always grateful patients and some years after she retired she received a phone call from a mother of one of her patients saying: ‘Dr. Pakula – you saved my life and I pray for you every day.’
Roman died in 1986. Even after turning sixty-five, Zofia continued to work nine months a year for five years, spending the winters in Florida. In her retirement, she was very active enjoying movies, books, concerts, bridge and Scrabble. She always walked as far as she could – whether ten kilometers daily in Florida with her friends, or short walks, with frequent rest, with her walker and her caregiver on the glorious autumn day before the final illness struck. Her final years were plagued by severe illness. She handled it all like she lived her life – with enormous grace, strength and courage.
Whatever the circumstances, she always did her best. People who met her stayed in touch. Fun loving and with a great sense of humor, she was a joy to be around. She was always kind, giving, and considerate. She faced the worst ordeals with a smile that always touched my soul. She was the best mother anybody could have.
Andrew Pakula
Dr. Zofia Pakula. December 13, 1919 to October 10, 2010
An edited excerpt from Dr. Pakula’s eulogy by her son,
July 2012
Icek Nierób was born on January 1, 1925 in Płock, as the son of Abraham and Ryfka (Regina) née Pencherek. Abraham and Ryfka were also the parents of Bela (born 1918), Miriam (born 1920), Leon (born 1922), Terca (twin sister of Icek, who died in […]
