After the war, many erstwhile Auschwitz prisoners claimed to owe him their lives, others accused him as a prisoner-doctor of criminal activity. He was besides accused of killing prisoners with phenol injections into the heart and taking part in selections into gas chambers.
Captain Dr. Władysław Dering left behind extended memories that have not yet been published. That's what he said about him. Władysław Bartoszewski (camp number 4427): “He faced terrible dilemmas all day. Who to save? Who suffers or who has a chance of survival? Do you follow the order of the SSman or do you refuse for moral reasons and give yourself a death sentence? This will not be decided unequivocally by any human court." In the first months of 1939, Władysław Dering was appointed by order of the Ministry of Military Affairs for a fewer weeks of field surgery course at the Institute of Trauma Surgery in Warsaw. Although he was educated as an obstetrician gynecologist, he opposed surgical cognition and skills so much that he was appointed Chief of the Surgical squad in Brest over the Bug in the face of the war and was appointed to active military service. 2 days before the outbreak of the war, he was promoted – as he himself writes in his memoirs – “to the rank of captain.”
After the Red Army's aggression into east Poland, 18 September 1939, Dering got into russian captivity, from which he managed to escape. He reached Warsaw on 9 November 1939, making contact with Major Jan Włodarkiewicz, who gave him a message about the creation of the Secret Polish Army. Dering joined this secret organization, and his task was to establish a sanitary service in the event of an armed struggle. On 3 July 1940, Władysław Dering was detained in his flat in Warsaw. His niece, called Żurawska, was active in the arrest. She was persuaded to cooperate with the occupier by her fiancé SS-Sturmbannführer, named Zazula, who was her colleague before the war and together studied at the Warsaw School of Economics.
His arrest did not consequence in any further arrests, as he did not betray anyone during interrogations at Szucha Avenue. After a short stay in prison in Pawiak, where his wife was besides shortly placed Kristina Ossowska, Dering was transported in the first Warsaw transport to Auschwitz, where he arrived on 15 August 1940. For the first fewer weeks, Władysław Dering – in item about which he wrote in his memoirs – marked with camp number 1723, did the heaviest works in the camp, including concrete curbs, from which another prisoners laid sidewalks, dragged a roller to kill the ground, or cleaned the sewer pits.
Insufficient food, murderous work, terrible sanitary and residential conditions, constant harassment and beating from SS men led to utmost exhaustion. Dering suffered hemorrhagic bowel inflammation and fainted while working. He was helped by doctors and prisoners.: Marian Dupont (No 2186) and Edward Nowak (No 447), who took care of him in the camp infirmary for 2 weeks. There, the SS garrison doctor in Auschwitz learned about Władysław Dering's medical skills, Max Popiersch, who agreed in the fall of 1940 that he should take the occupation of a doctor-inmate. Its task was to establish a camp outpatient in Block 28. Despite better nutrition and dismissal from camp appeals, work in the infirmary was not easy. frequently Dering had to survey as many as 600 sick during the day, of which only 20 could choose and direct to a camp infirmary where there were no medicines and dressings, and food was hungry.
Care for the sick was frequently exercised by nursing prisoners who had no medical or even nursing qualifications. In turn, inmates doctors had to hide the real diseases of prisoners, or even discharge the severely sick earlier from the camp infirmary in order to prevent them from being referred to death by SS doctors. Due to the expanding number of prisoners, as well as the increase in infectious diseases, the camp authorities decided in the second half of 1941 to grow and reorganize the Auschwitz prisoner hospital, which was located in blocks with numbers 19, 20, 21 and 28.
Dr. Władysław Fejkiel (camp number 5647) He recalled: “At that time, it was the camp authorities who instructed Władysław Dering to organize a surgical ward and an operating room. The surgical unit has worked under conditions so far unknown in medical history. Inmates-doctors addicted to their oppressors, officers and SS lieutenants were forced to teach their surgeons, and at the same time to direct the procedures to defend their fellow prisoners from the effects of possible botch. Sometimes you had to assist with treatments that were not essential or even advisable. SS doctors with no qualifications operated. In June 1941, gynecologist Władysław Dering, besides educated in general surgery, became head of the surgical ward. On the ground floor, Dering developed a clean surgery unit with an operating area on the ground level and led it himself. He was assisted by doctors: Zbigniew Sobieszczański, Jan Grabczyński and Emil Igner. The most common drug was Zenon Jurski. The flegiers, Jan Wolny, Aleksander Górecki and Józef Panasevicz, prepared order in the operating room. On the level there was organized a branch of alleged dirty (poor) surgery. It was directed by Wilhelm Türschmied, later by Jan Grabczyński, with the aid of Stephen Krucz, Stanisław Wrony-Merski, Stefan Żabicki and others."
Władysław Dering as head of this ward, and since the fall of 1943 Lagerältester (older camp) of the prisoner hospital, has conducted a number of surgical procedures and operations, saving the lives of prisoners. He besides tried to save them from death during the selection of the sick to the gas chambers in Birkenau, carried out in the camp infirmary by SS doctors. "He saved hundreds of people from transports to destruction, hiding them in the infirmary. Before all gas selection he had previously learned, he hid people in various ways, moving them from the hall to the area or releasing them to the camp,” the erstwhile prisoner reported. Roman Taul (No 1108).
In turn Tadeusz Szymanski (No 20034) survived his stay in the camp with anti-tifus injections that were injected into him for Dering's knowledge. “I know that as a very good surgeon Dr. Dering performed a number of successful operations to prisoners of Poles. He performed the operation in the evening, due to the fact that at that time there was no SS doctor in the camp" – Szymanski recalled who was curator at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum after the war.
Władysław Dering besides actively acted in the prisoner's conspiracy and was 1 of the first to enter the Vitold Pilecki created by the captain in the secret camp of the Military Organization. Pilecki's testimonies have been preserved, in which he states that the most commonly utilized means of gaining the assurance of the Germans was the “loud routing” of fellow prisoners, which became 1 of the reasons for making charges against him after the war.
Rotmaster Witold Pilecki wrote of him: “I find that I knew Dr. Władysław Dering as 1 of the workers of the said organization on the best part of the concentration camp in Oświęcim. Dr. Dering (...) was sworn in by me and was ordered to control the situation in the local infirmary (Krankenbau. The work was difficult, however, which Dr Dering did for 3 years very well and after opposing the situation in the infirmary was 1 of the pillars of our organization. However, he had to have a figure on the outside that might not have liked the individual uninitiated people.”
In 1943, Władysław Dering and respective another inmates-doctors were forced to operate judaic prisoners who had previously been subjected by SS doctors to sterilization experiments, as Dr. Schumann writes in his memoirs: “In the afternoon Schumann returned to the infirmary with chief doctor Entress and called me to Arztzimmer – the doctor’s room, Entress as my direct supervisor told me that by order of the chief commandant he was giving the O.R. with all staff at the disposal of Dr. Schumann, who is to carry out “special” tasks here. Then Schumann spoke. "I wanted to take into account your childish superstitions and not force you to obey, which is absolutely binding on you in the camp. You've seen that my full operation would take a long time. I'm a venerologist and I'm not going to become a surgeon, Chief Commandant has ordered you to execute these operations under my command. This will be for the benefit of the camp, the needy labour of young Jews, as well as of the patients themselves, who will return to their work within a week of their infirmary stay."
During these operations, the victims of the experiments were removed from the testicles of men, and the female ovaries, previously exposed with X-rays, were subjected to further medical examinations. Concerning the coercion of SS doctors of Polish prisoners-doctors to execute castration operations, Dr. Władysław Dering continues: “I gathered immediately on the surgical block primarily interested, i.e. 2 fellow surgeons – Dr Jan Grabczyński from Krakow and Zbigniew Sobieszczanski. I invited respective older colleagues of doctors, including Professor, Jagiellonian University Jan Olbrycht, Major Dr. Rudolf Diem from Warsaw, Dr Władysław Fejkla from Krosna, Dr Leon Wasilewski from Poznań, from judaic doctors Dr Samuel Steinberg from Paris, from non-doctors Eng. Adam Kurylovich from Warsaw. I presented the German requirements and possible consequences for all, both patients and doctors, in the race of opposition. I was waiting for everyone to speak, for this was not about me, but about the full squad of people from the infirmary and over 80 patients. Absolutely no 1 advised to protest, considering it besides risky. The arguments of colleagues mostly overlaped.
The most serious age and rank of Prof. Olbrycht, as a medical examiner, and thus dealing with medicine and law, took a position which was adopted unanimously as a consensus opinion of the gathered. According to the professor, we are in a camp in exceptional conditions, contrary to all international, human and divine laws, eighty-eight persons deprived of radiation A single-sided roentgen of the genital glands in the event of our refusing to take samples or full damaged glands on an operational basis, is exposed to life loss. Apart from any legal point of view, it is our work in existing camp conditions to save human life at all costs. In his opinion, adopted by the assembly, it was: to remove damaged glands which, practically after acting with the X-rays, are inactive, i.e. for the body without meaning, and in any uncommon cases, constitute a threat of possible cancer swinging, even undesirable. But we save eighty-eight young human beings, with one-sided healthy sex glands that warrant full sexual life. In addition, we do not hazard the danger of punishment, including death, to infirmary staff. Dr. Steinberg quoted the conviction of 1 of the to be operated: “At the cost of life, a young man claimed, I would alternatively quit 1 hand, let alone 1 and in addition a destroyed testicle.”
Tadeusz Orzeszko (camp number 131527) states, in turn, that ‘The evidence books of block 21 in which the surgical unit was located were hidden during the evacuation. The place of concealment was the furnace in the camp bath room, where they were removed after liberation.” The survivors of the 4 camp “Books of Surgery”, of which 3 are at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archives in Oświęcim, while the 4th 1 is in possession of the Military-Media Museum in St. Petersburg. They concern the Auschwitz I main camp (camp infirmary in blocks 21 and 28). The preserved “Books of Surgery” covers the period from 1 October 1941 to 15 January 1945.
From the preserved camp surgical books from the infirmary block no. 21, stored in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Archives, it is clear that specified operations were actually performed by Polish prisoners doctors. 1 of the surgeons was Dr. Dering, who was accused after the war that he only performed specified operations in Auschwitz. erstwhile prisoners of this camp, mainly associated with the camp conspiracy, claim in their accounts that Dr. Dering's endurance in his position was of large importance to the resistance. These witnesses are talking about illegal life-saving operations, the transportation of Typhoid injections, the concealment of life-threatening prisoners in the infirmary ward. The camp conspiracy grid besides helped to get free of spies and informers.
On January 25, 1944, he was released from the Oświęcim camp and transferred to Chorzów, where he was forced to be employed at a private clinic there, operated by Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg. This Nazi doctor was known to him earlier from the sterilization experiments he conducted in the camp with the SS doctor, Horst Schuman. After 9 months of work, Dering along with another staff and patients from the obstetric-gynecological ward in Chorzów, was transferred to Jastrzębie-Zdrój, where he continued to work under the direction Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg, which was not until 19 January 1945, in fear of approaching russian troops, went to Ravensbrück to proceed his criminal investigation into mass sterilization there.
Władysław Dering utilized this fact and was hidden by Silesian families almost until the end of March 1945, frequently changing his whereabouts. After the liberation of Jastrzębie-Zdrój he was detained by Red Army soldiers who released him from custody after 8 days, which allowed him to leave for Warsaw in April 1945.
In November 1945 Dering, threatened by communists, was secretly transferred from Warsaw to the 2nd Polish Corps, commanded by General Władysław Anders, who was stationed in Italy. There he began working as a surgeon at a Polish military hospital, from where he was transferred to the UK in August 1946 with the full II Polish Corps. After disbanding this Corps, he settled permanently on British soil, where as a consequence of repeated accusations of cooperation with SS doctors in sterilization experiments, he was placed on the list of war criminals.
In January 1947 the communist government in Poland demanded the release of Dering. The prosecution was based primarily on the evidence of a erstwhile prisoner, a judaic woman, Dr Alina Brewdy (No 62761), who worked as a doctor in Block 10 at the home camp and accused him of having done about 17 1000 experimental operations on pseudomedical judaic prisoners and prisoners.
Dering's case besides became an chance for the communist authorities in Poland to sue propaganda with London's emigration. Dering was portrayed as “fanatic even before the national war and racial anti-Semite”. The English arrested him and launched a detailed investigation that lasted nineteen months, but did not find adequate evidence to support his allegations. For this reason, they refused to grant his extradition and yet released him from Brixston prison in the fall of 1948.
Władysław Dering – postwar photo
It is worth noting that Dering was in the British prison at the same time as the trial of his co-worker from the military conspiracy in KL Auschwitz, the heroic captain of Witold Pilecki, sentenced to death punishment and murdered by a shot in the back of the Warsaw prison in Mokotów on 25 May 1948. erstwhile the English released Dr. Dering from prison, he went to Somalia after respective months and worked there as a doctor until 1960. In the same year, he returned to London, where he belonged to the Polish Union of erstwhile Political Prisoners. The British Queen awarded him the Order of the OBE and the title “Sir” for her same - sacrificing work on the African continent.
In 1959, a book by an American judaic author was published, Leon Uris, entitled “Exodus”. Its author portrayed Dering as a war criminal, repeating the allegations of the already mentioned Brewdy. Dering in 1962, before the London court, brought Uris a trial during which he was determined on the basis of preserved camp surgical books that he had performed over a 100 operations on judaic prisoners and prisoners, removing their sex organs, previously burned during criminal radiation radiations with X-rays. These pseudomedical experiments were carried out earlier by SS doctors: Prof. Dr. Carl Clauberg, Dr. Horst Schumann, Dr. Edward Wirths and Dr. Bruno Weber.
Operations carried out by Polish doctors, including Władysław Dering, in his opinion, were essential and saved lives for fellow prisoners. The judicial wire clearly showed that the numbers given by Dr. Alina Brewda and judaic author Leon Uris were false. In 1965, Dering won this process and received symbolic compensation of 1 penny. In addition, the publisher of “Exodus” was obliged to apologize to him and pay him £5 100 in damages
Władysław Dering died shortly in a infirmary in London on July 10, 1965. He never felt guilty, although he admitted in 1 of his explanations that the alleged experimental operations carried out in Block 21 in Auschwitz were the origin of his sadness and disgust. The faults were not conclusively proved to him, but the postwar period was a constant conflict for a good name with the charges and contempt that he was surrounded by. Władysław Bartoszewski argued that it was not possible to draw the line between heroism and crime in the situation of a prisoner who was Dr. Dering.
Dr. Adam Cyra
The author is simply a retired worker of the Auschwitz-Birkenau KL Museum
Think Poland, No. 21-22 (24-31.05.2026)
