Janusz Bardach

Janusz Bardach was a gulag survivor, author of "Man is Wolf to Man", and noted plastic surgeon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Bardach

Jewish gulag survivor, author, and noted plastic surgeon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Bardach

Dr. Janusz Bardach, a plastic surgeon who improved techniques for treating cleft lip and cleft palate and who wrote an acclaimed account of his life in Soviet labor camps in the early 1940's, died on Aug. 16 in Iowa City, his home. He was 83.

Dr. Bardach, a native of Ukraine who trained in Moscow after World War II, practiced plastic surgery in Poland and headed an early program in plastic surgery there. He came to the United States in 1972 and the next year became chairman of the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City. He also held other posts, administrative and teaching, at the university's Medical College before retiring in 1991.

Dr. Bardach developed what colleagues came to call the Bardach palatoplasty, a surgical procedure for patients with congenital clefts of the palate, a condition in which the palate is separated into halves.

The new procedure minimized scarring, entailed one operation instead of the two that had previously been required and improved the patient's speaking ability.

Janusz Bardach was born in Odessa on July 28, 1919, and moved with his family to Poland in 1920. Poland was partitioned by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, and the next year he was drafted into the Soviet Army.

But after an accident in which a tank he was driving flipped onto its side, he was sentenced first to a death sentence and later his death sentence was commuted to 10 years at hard labor. He was sent to Kolyma - the harshest, coldest, and most deadly prison in Joseph Stalin's labor camp system - the Siberia of Siberias. He served roughly half the sentence.

Dr. Bardach's gulag experiences are recounted in Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag (University of California Press, 1998), which he wrote with Kathleen Gleeson. A review in The New York Times Book Review said, Bardach's meditations on slavery tap into the well of pain and insight that feeds songs of freedom everywhere.

A former wife of Dr. Bardach, Yelena, died before him.

He is survived by his wife, Phyllis Harper-Bardach; a daughter, Ewa Bardach of Iowa City; his brother, Juliusz, of Warsaw; two stepsons, Freeman Harper of Iowa City and William Harper of West Des Moines, Iowa; and a stepdaughter, Phyllis Finch of Atlanta.

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In 1990s he lived on 328 Highland Drive, Iowa City, Iowa 52246

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When Bardach was a young man, newly married to his high school sweetheart, the second world war broke out. Poland was overrun and in July 1940, he was drafted into the Russian Red Army. In August 1941, he was arrested on the front line for "anti-Soviet propaganda." An incident driving a tank and outspoken comments about politics led to the court martial. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to ten years hard labor in a camp in Kolyma, Siberia.

On the way to execution an officer of the NKVD—the Communist secret police—pulled 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.

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.

After he was released from the labor camp in 1946, he returned to Poland and received a stipend from the Polish government to study medicine in Moscow.

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 at the Moscow Medical-Stomatological Institute in 1954 and returned to Poland where he became chair of the Department of Maxillofacial Surgery at the Medical University in Lodz. He later became the head of Poland's first Department of Plastic Surgery.

For 18 years Dr Bardach practiced 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.

He wrote more than 200 scientific articles and 12 books on plastic surgery as well as numerous essays. He won several awards during his career including First Prize from the Ministry of Health in Poland in 1966 and 1968. Dr. Bardach was a member of the International Society of Plastic Surgeons, the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Midwestern Association of Plastic Surgeons, International Society of Maxillofacial Surgery, American Cleft Palate Association, Polish Society of Plastic Surgery, American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, American Medical Association, Iowa Medical Association and the Johnson County Medical Association.

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