For the Good of Humanity
Ludwik Rajchman, Medical Statesman
Marta A. Balinska, Columbia University's Paris
Program
"It is a rediscovery of a utopian who believed in the
efficiency of international institutions, in the troubled
era of fierce nationalism."
- Le Monde
In this biography of Ludwik Rajchman, Marta A. Balinska
paints a portrait of a true hero of our times. He was
born in Poland in 1881 and was an exponent of humanitarian
intervention and defender of colonized people, as adept
in secret diplomacy as in organizing vast anti-epidemic
campaigns. He inspired the creation of WHO and the foundation
of UNICEF, of which he became the first chairman. Progressive
but opposed to all dogmas, he was forced by McCarthyism
to flee the U.S. and soon became an object of suspicion
in the Soviet bloc, finding himself estranged from his
beloved Poland.
As the story of this remarkable life unfolds, the reader
is given a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the major events
that shaped the twentieth century. Using family archives
and documentary sources from a dozen countries, the
author brilliantly reconstructs the career of a man
who was not only the first médecin sans frontiere but
also an intellectual with an exceptional sense of the
universal.
1998
310 pages
ISBN 978-963-9116-17-7 cloth $44.95 / €33.95 /
£30.00
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