In a movie, rescuing refugees from some oppressive regime usually involves dodging bullets and leading stormtroopers on high-speed chases. In real life, the stories are just as exciting, but usually involve more ingenuity and fewer explosions. Totalitarian regimes are all about brute force, after all -- that's the sort of shit they're good at. So beating them means, well, getting creative ...

5 Dr. Eugene Lazowski Faked an Epidemic to Save Thousands From the Nazis

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Our first story of heroically defying oppression involves the Nazis, who turn up as the bad guy in a lot of our history-themed articles (to be honest, we feel like they brought that on themselves).

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"Can everyone who's a dick please raise their hand?"

As a physician in Rozwadow, Poland, during World War II, Dr. Eugene Lazowski knew of the terrible fate that awaited Jews in his city. He also knew his terrible fate if caught treating them. But since the Hippocratic Oath didn't let Lazowski turn Action Doctor and shoot bad guys to bits, he needed another way to save the day.

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The Badass Plan:

He faked an epidemic and scared away every Hitler sycophant around. Because on second thought, this is war and fuck the Hippocratic Oath.

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"It also says med school should be free, and we saw how well that worked out."

He and his colleague, Dr. Stanislaw Matulewicz, knew the big bad Nazi soldiers lived in fear of epidemic typhus, which is when you catch regular typhus but thoughtfully brought enough to share with the whole class. The Nazis refused to arrest anybody with the virus, because God forbid somebody with a deadly disease infect everybody else at the death camp.

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If they ran into a situation where too many people had it in one area, they Germans would just quarantine the whole place and leave everybody to get sick and die in peace. Lazowski and Matulewicz decided to exploit this, but knew it wouldn't be enough to simply scream "typhus!" any time an Indiana Jones antagonist wandered into the neighborhood. No, faking an epidemic would mean injecting everyone with freaking typhus.