An awful lot of underground shenanigans went on during World War II that were only discovered years later. Those who defied Nazi occupation knew that secrecy was a matter of survival, and after the war many just wanted to forget. Dr. Eugene Lazowski worked in Rozwadow, Poland, under German occupation. He lived near the Jewish ghetto, and he knew that he could only help its inhabitants in secret. But he treated children under the cover of darkness and smuggled medicine and supplies into the ghetto when he could. The Nazis were gradually taking the Jewish population away, and conscripting the non-Jewish residents of Rozwadow for labor.
Lazowski's later fame came from the time he, along with his friend Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz, engineered a fake typhus epidemic in Rozwadow. As more and more people in Rozwadow and the surrounding villages had to be quarantined for typhus, the occupying Nazis tried to keep their distance. Deportations ceased, and roundups for labor stopped. After the war, the story got out that there had been no typhus at all, although with confusing and incorrect details. Lazowski emigrated to the US and only wrote his version of events in 1993. Read the true story of how the doctors created a fake typhus epidemic in Rozwadow at Utterly Interesting.