Dr. Joseph Jaksy

Born: Unknown 1900, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia

Doctors often have to take extraordinary measures to save lives. But what if those measures included putting your own life on the line. Dr. Jaksy was a urologist in Bratislava, Slovakia. In November 1940, Slovakia joined the Axis and was the first Axis partner to agree to deport its Jewish residents to Nazi labor and concentration camps. Dr. Jaksy was the personal physician to the founder of the Slovak People's Party, the fascist regime that ruled Slovakia during World War II. He used his position of power to organize rescue efforts that saved at least 25 Jews from deportation to camps. During the war, Dr. Jaksy treated many "sick" patients whose only illness was that they were on the Nazi deportation list. Dr. Jaksy sheltered them in his wards, once even pretending to give a man an operation so he could safely escape from the Germans. With a group of friends, he devised a plan that included: finding shelter, providing money, food, and medical care, forging identification papers and falsifying medical records; and helping people get out of the country. He was never arrested, although his involvement with the resistance was suspected. He stayed in Slovakia after the war, but left in 1948, fearing persecution by the new communist regime. Dr. Jaksy made a new home in the United States, and was honored by Israel and the State of New York shortly before his death in 1991. "What I did," he wrote, "I did in my role as a doctor and out of my feelings as a human being."