The Next Page / Pittsburgh doctor, Polish warrior: The Jerzy Einhorn story
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Jerzy Einhorn's identification papers from 1943. -
The miniature Rolleiflex of Jerzy Einhorn, a Polish resistance fighter in World War II. His photographs shot with this camera illustrate his book, "Recollections of the End of an Era." -
The Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta -- the highest honor bestowed by the Polish government -- awarded to Jerzy Einhorn last year.
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A proud old man died the other day and a window on history closed.
Jerzy Einhorn was 92 when he passed away at his Mt. Lebanon home on July 4.
A prominent doctor in his native Poland in the 1960s, he came to the U.S. in 1967 and became an endocrinologist at Montefiore Hospital, where he treated thousands of patients and directed the thyroid screening program. He also established health clinics in Hazelwood and Greenfield and taught at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Einhorn leaves behind a wife and three children from two marriages. He also leaves behind a back story from his youth straight from the movies -- a tale full of Nazis, narrow escapes and dangerous liaisons in occupied Poland during World War II.
A Polish cavalry officer, he fought the Germans in 1939 and then served with the Polish underground Home Army in the Warsaw Uprising, a battle that ended with the Nazi annihilation of the city in 1944.
He won military decorations, escaped captivity multiple times, twice crossed the Eastern Front, swam the Vistula River and ended up imprisoned and beaten by the Soviet secret police in 1945.
He lost his father -- forced to dig his own grave before being shot -- and a sister, sent to a concentration camp with her two children.
His story is one of millions from that time, but unlike many others, he wrote it all down in a memoir, "Recollections of the End of an Era," published in Polish in 2000 and translated into English in 2005.
The book sold fairly well, but he wrote it mostly for his children so they would understand his early life. Although a caring father, he was feisty and tough, they said, and no doubt hardened by the war.
"He never called himself a hero. He was thrown into a situation and did the best he could, like everyone else," said his son Janusz, who lives in the West End. "He had a really strong character. He was the kind of guy who had to be in charge."
Jerzy Einhorn was born into a Jewish family in the coal town of Sosnowiec in 1919. After his parents divorced when he was a child, he converted to Catholicism, although he never had much use for formal religion.
His much-older sisters, Halina and Terenia, did not convert. Halina would survive while Terenia perished in the Holocaust.
Jerzy attended a military academy and then college, hoping to become an engineer. But the war came and he was called for duty with the horse-drawn artillery. Before he left for battle, Terenia slipped her sapphire ring onto his finger, saying, "Wear it. It will protect you."
In the September 1939 campaign against Hitler's panzer blitz, he writes in his memoir, he had to threaten his own men with a machine gun to keep them from running away. "Whoever abandons his gun will be shot!" he told them.
First Published July 24, 2011 12:00 am
