Janusz Bardach, Russian plastic surgeon, educator. Recipient Highest Science award Ministry of Health, Poland, 1966, 68; recipient Highest Science award Town Council of Lodz, 1970, 3d prize for clinical research in otolaryngology American Association Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, 1977; federal grantee, 1973-1975, 76–.
Background
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). Janusz grew up in Poland as a secular Jew and inherited from his mother a strong support of the Soviet Union.
Education
Physician, Moscow Medical-Stomatological Institute, 1950. Doctor of Medicine, Moscow Medical-Stomatological Institute, 1953.
Career
He was the younger brother of Polish legal scholar Juliusz Bardach. As a teenager, he suffered from anti-Semitic attacks and joined Jewish and left-wing groups. When, during World 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. In 1950 Bardach graduated from the Moscow Medical Stomatologogical Institute, and completed his residency there as well in 1954, specializing in reconstructive maxillofacial surgery.
Eventually, he developed the procedure known as the Bardach palatoplasty. During those years he could not speak freely about his experiences during the war nor return to Poland, as both could cause the arrest of his family members remaining in Poland.
Politics
Anti-Semitism and Communism drove him to escape Poland, and in 1972 he joined the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Iowa and later became chairman of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery of the Head and Neck. After the fall of Communism he wrote his two memoirs, listed below.
Membership
Member International Society Plastic Surgeons, British Association Plastic Surgery, Royal Society Medicine, International Society Maxillofacial Surgery, American Society Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (associate), Turkish Society Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (honorary), American Medical Association, Johnson County Medical Association, American Cleft Palate Association, American Academy Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Lodges: Rotary.