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Letters to the Editor
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The Journal
Ghetto pharmacist
From Mr A. M. Melzack, MRPharmS
I visited Poland for the first time at the New Year and had taken with
me the Christmas issue of The Journal for light reading. The article
by Edzard Ernst about a pharmacist
convicted of war crimes (PJ, 18/25
December 2004, p909) was counterbalanced by the story I encountered of
Tadeusz Pankiewicz (1908–93), a pharmacist awarded the Medal of
the Righteous Among the Nations for his work supporting Jews in the Krakow
ghetto.
The Apteka Pod Orlem, or Pharmacy Under the Eagle, on the edge of the ghetto,
has now become the National Remembrance Museum in Krakow. Tadeusz Pankiewicz,
the owner, was the only non-Jewish inhabitant of the ghetto. The Germans, fearing
an outbreak of a typhoid epidemic consented to the pharmacy’s existence
and it was open 24 hours, seven days a week from October 1941. It functioned
not only as a health centre but also as an embassy and diplomatic station in
a walled and imprisoned part of the city. It was a meeting place for scientists,
artists and police as well as serving the health care needs of the ghetto inhabitants.
The pharmacist and his three female staff became intermediaries for the beleaguered
Jews and took care of applications, delivered correspondence and obtained food
and medicines some of which were given free when the inhabitants could not
afford to pay. Tadeusz Pankiewicz also offered shelter in the pharmacy for
those hunted by the Germans and helped arrange false documents to save them.
A book entitled ‘The Cracow Ghetto Pharmacy’, written by its owner,
was published in 1947 by the Holocaust Library, New York.
Not far away in the same city, Oskar Schindler with his list was also helping
to save Jews from the Nazis. However, until a film is made about the caring
and compassionate pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz, , the wider world may not
know of this extraordinary story.
Allan Melzack
Manchester
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The Journal featured an article about Tadeusz Pankiewicz and
his pharmacy in the Krakow ghetto in 1993 (PJ, 6 November 1993,
pp634–5)
— EDITOR
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Making sense of the “-omes”
From Mr M. Stein, MRPharmS
Yes, at last! All my problems sorted. You know, prescriptions coming
in two hours for 10 residents (60 items), liquids required to be in bottles
and boxes with child-resistant closures. Liquids required to be out of
boxes with non-CRC caps (repetitive strain injury!). Handwritten alterations
to medicines administration records only/printed alterations only? Labels
advising when to telephone the GP if the medicine does not work. Nomads,
Manrax — you know the rest.
By the time I had struggled through two paragraphs of “How to make
sense of the ‘-omes’” (PJ, 15 January, p59),
I realised this article was not the answer.
Ah well — ’opefully ’ard-pressed pharmacists will ’appily
wait until ’elp appears on the ’orizon fairly ’astily!
Malcolm Stein
Hatfield, Hertfordshire
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal