Janusz Bardach

Janusz Bardach (July 28, 1919 in Odessa – August 16, 2002 in Iowa City) was a gulag survivor, author, and noted plastic surgeon. He was the younger brother of Polish legal scholar Juliusz Bardach. Survivors include: his wife, Phyllis Harper- Bardach of Iowa City, Iowa; his daughter, Ewa Bardach and her husband Hani Elkadi of Iowa City; his granddaughter, Nina Elkadi of Iowa City.

Janusz Bardach was born in Odessa to Polish Jews Ottylia and Mark Bardach. At the age of one, his father Mark moved the family back to Wlodzimierz-Wolynski, Poland (now Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Ukraine). Mark Bardach was a dentist, and his uncle, Jakov Julievich Bardach, was a doctor. Janusz grew up in Poland as a secular Jew and inherited from his mother a strong support of the Soviet Union. As a teenager, he suffered from anti-Semitic attacks and joined Jewish and left-wing groups.

When, during World War II Poland was partitioned between Germany and the Soviet Union, Bardach was drafted into the Red Army. He became a tank driver. Sarcastic political remarks in training and an accident during a scouting mission that resulted in an overturned tank caused him to be court-martialed for counter-revolutionary activity. He was condemned to execution, but the sentence was commuted to hard labor in the gulag.

While in the transit camps leading to the gold mines, Bardach experienced anti-Semitism from fellow Polish inmates. In order to escape the Polish sector he faked stomach cramps and went to the camp doctor. The doctor was impressed that Bardach already knew the diagnosis and treatment from his feigned symptoms, and asked Bardach if he was a medical student. Bardach lied and claimed to be one, drawing on medical knowledge gleaned from his father, and was made a feldsher, or doctor's assistant, in the camps.

Later, Bardach was sent to the infamous gold mines at Kolyma. While being transferred, his truck's furnace exploded, killing the driver, guards, and many prisoners. Using this incident and his previous record as a doctor's assistant, Bardach talked his way into working in the camp hospitals, where he continued to pretend to be a medical student. After the war, Bardach's sentence was commuted, and he moved to Moscow to attend medical school.

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