Interview with Janusz Szajewski

Janusz Szajewski, the founder of the Warsaw Poisons Control Centre and Haemodialysis Unit at Praski Hospital in Warsaw, Poland, was born on February 25, 1924 in Grodzisk, Poland. He undertook his undergraduate studies from 1939 to 1945 at the underground Chrobry College in Piotrkow, Poland, at a time when higher education was outlawed to Poles and punishable by imprisonment at Auschwitz. At war's end, Dr. Szajewski went to medical school at the Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland, from 1945-1950. Further training in Internal Medicine was obtained at the Medical University of Warsaw. Because of his former activity in the underground Polish Army during the war his training was interrupted in 1951 by a 6-month deportation by the Polish communist regime to Silesia andforced employment as a coal-mine physician. During the 1950s, he also worked as chief of the Department of Internal Medicine in the Polish Red Cross Hospital in Hamhyng, North Korea. Subsequently, from 1959-1960, Dr. Szajewski served as a Rockefeller Fellow at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, under the guidance of Irvine H. Page. Dr. Szajewski began his work with the Warsaw Poisons Control Centre and Haemodialysis Unit in 1970 and directed the center 1970-1996.