Marian Ciepielowski

Ciepielowski married a fellow Polish survivor in West Germany, and in 1951 they immigrated to the United States. He worked at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York, where he eventually rose to the post of deputy director. He died in 1973 and was buried in Metuchen, New Jersey.

After his release from Buchenwald, Ciepielowski (along with fellow prisoner-doctor Robert Waitz [de], who had been imprisoned at Auschwitz and Buchenwald) wrote an article ("Le typhus experimental au camp de Buchenwald") on the typhus experiments in Buchenwald that was published in May 1946. He was later approached by representatives of a large pharmaceutical firm who were stymied by their inability to produce a viable typhus vaccine using the fraudulent methods published under Ding-Schuler's name.

By late 1942, German forces were taking significant losses from typhus, particularly on the Russian front. Joachim Mrugowsky, head of the Waffen-SS's Hygiene Institute, had plans to produce a vaccine, but these plans were delayed by the bombing of his headquarters. Mrugowsky instead decided that the vaccine would be produced at Buchenwald, which was judged to be at lower risk of Allied bombing. One of the camp's SS officers, the surgeon Erwin Ding-Schuler, needing researchers to staff his vaccine laboratory, pulled Ciepielowski to assist. Ciepielowski would work in the camp hygiene department from July 1943 to April 1945.

Ciepielowski, who already considered himself a socialist at university, joined the Polish defense against the Nazi invasion in September 1939. After a brief internment in the USSR, he returned to Poland and joined the clandestine resistance. He was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1941 and convicted based on vague accusations of anti-German activities. He was imprisoned at Montelupich Prison before being sent to Buchenwald.

Marian Ciepielowski (30 August 1907–1 February 1973) was a Polish physician and scientist. A survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, he is best known for his activity as a saboteur within the camp's vaccine production unit. Ciepielowski's actions resulted in useful vaccines being distributed to camp inmates, while inactive and useless "vaccines" were sent to Nazi soldiers. After the war he emigrated to the United States.

Ciepielowski was born in 1907 to a Polish Catholic family in Dzikowiec. He attended a school in Tarnowskie Góry and then went to study medicine in Krakow, graduating in 1934 from the Jagiellonian University Medical College. He was active in the Bratnia Pomoc student organization. Specializing in infectious diseases, after graduation, he worked at various places including Krakow's Department of Microbiology and Serology and a social insurance company.