Tajna działalność Wydziału Lekarskiego Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego w latach 1939–1945

During the Second World War Nazi occupying forces closed down the University of Warsaw and other Polish academies. Secondary and higher level education was forbidden. In spite of interdictions and death penalty threat many professors were teaching in private apartments. That activity created a structure of secret studies, which became part of the Polish resistance. The Medical Faculty was the most active department of the University of Warsaw. Many young people wanted to start or continue medical studies, therefore the Medical Faculty Council decided to establish a secret two-year Medical College, (which later evolved into full Medical Faculty) and legal private vocational school known as Professor Zaorski’s School. Officially the school was educating medical help staff (nurses, paramedics) but unofficially they were future medical doctors, because the institution secretly carried out the program of the first two years of regular medical studies. Alumni of Prof. Zaorski’s School could continue their studies at the secret Medical Faculty during hospital practices. The secret Medical Faculty of the University of Warsaw completed its activity along with the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.