Mark (Meir) Dworzecki — Association of Jews of Vilna and vicinity in Israel

Mark (Meir) Dworzecki was born in 1908 in Vilna and completed his medical studies at the University of Vilna in 1935. When the war broke out he served in the Polish army and was taken prisoner by the Germans. He escaped and returned to Vilna and worked as a doctor in the ghetto. His attempt to join the partisans failed. He was deported from the ghetto to a labour camp in Estonia.

Following the liberation Dworzecki emigrated to Israel and was one of the pioneers in researching medicine during the Holocaust. He testified at the Eichmann trial. One of his books is about the history of the Vilna Ghetto "Jerusalem of Lithuania in Resistance and in the Holocaust" (Yerushalayim D'lita Ba'meri U'va'shoah) in 1953 he was awarded the Israel Prize for Social Sciences.

Public Health in the Vilna Ghetto as a Form of Jewish Resistance

Marc Dvorzetski – the conscience of the surviving remnant of Jewry

Dr. Marc Dvorzetski died in 1975 at the age of 67 after a long illness. His funeral, which was held on a Sunday, was attended by a large crowd –partisan fighters, concentration camp survivors, writers and doctors from Vilna and the vicinity, students from Bar Ilan University—a mixed crowd who came to pay their last respects to the late doctor and mourn his passing; he was beloved by so many from different walks of life and his death left them all heavy-hearted.

He was eulogized by the rector of Bar Ilan University Professor M. Z Kaddari, Dr. Feigenberg, H. Lazar, A Sutzkover and S. Cholawski.

On the shloshim of his death, a number of memorial services were held by groups and organizations that he had worked with or had had close connections. At all these services, public figures and his close friends paid tribute to the late Marc Dvorzetski before his many admirers who had assembled there. On that day too, his tombstone was unveiled at Kiryat Shaul cemetery.

Dr. Marc Dvorzetski was very active and very resourceful. He was a wonderful, colorful person, honest and straightforward, a very good friend and, above all, a devoted husband and father. He dedicated all his time to his Torah and good deeds. His Torah was memorializing the terrible Holocaust of which he was also a victim. He was a witness to the extermination of his people by the murderous Germans, and suffered body and soul all the terrors of the period. After liberation he devoted his time and strength to teaching, memorializing, expounding the lessons of the Holocaust and advocating awareness of the Holocaust in the hearts of the nation, the youth and the nations of the world. He was very popular and renowned among Holocaust survivors in Israel and worldwide by both Jews and gentiles alike. He was revered by all who esteemed his generosity and his persistence as a doctor, an activist, a writer and a spokesman for the victims and the survivors.

From: Haim Lazar

For further reading:  

Boaz Cohen, Dr Meir (Mark) Dworzecki: the historical mission of a survivor historian/Holocaust Studies A Journal of Culture and History 2015