The initial period of biochemistry in Lublin.

On September 23, 1944 thus before the end of the war a university was set up which was named after Maria Curie-Sk3odowska (UMCS). Already on September 26 the first meeting of scientists took place, described by Professor Blauth-Opieñska as a “meeting on barrels since no chairs were available and although formal inauguration of the first academic year took place on January 1945 the first lectures began as early as September 1944”. These facts prove that the scientists were determined to rebuild Polish science. In Lublin a group of scientists was present at that time who had survived the pogroms of Hitler and Stalin and who undertook the difficult task in organizing a university which had not been present in this town before the war. This made finding a location as well as even rudimentary equipment even more difficult. The first President of UMCS was Professor Raabe, and the vice-president Professor L. Hirszfeld, who in 1944 asked Professor Janina Blauth-Opieñska to head the Department of Physiological Chemistry. BlauthOpieñska, who did her Ph.D. with Professor Bêdziñski at the University of Warsaw and collaborated with Professor Parnas in Lwów and Professor Weigl during the war in Lwów rapidly obtained her Doctor of Science and became a professor in 1948, and invested great energy in organizing the Department. After the war most scientists had left Lublin moving to other cities, in order to start to organize biochemical institutions there. In her memoirs Professor Blauth-Opieñska wrote that for a year the department did not have a permanent location, and only in 1946 did they receive “a building of monumental value, the former seat of the high rabbinical school the Jeszybot. The lectures took place in the great workshop hall whereas in the smaller rooms we organized laboratory exercises and started research”. The greatest and most difficult task facing Professor Blauth-Opieñska was to form scientific cadres “therefore I offered positions of junior assistants to my best students. Graduate students who had majored in pharmacy and chemistry came to work in the department”. A serious difficulty was the fact that the authorities had blocked the possibility of obtaining Ph.D. titles in the way this had been done before the war. The authorities decided to reorganize science according to the Soviet system. Professor Blauth-Opieñska learned about this in Warsaw and rapidly returned to Lublin and in 1951 a commission was set up and the best assistants received doctorates, among others the later Professor Tomasz Borkowski. Thank to this move the status of the Department became stronger. Professor Blauth-Opieñska also writes about the enormous difficulties in obtaining equipVol. 50 No. 2/2003