Stanislaw Donigiewicz

Stanislaw Donigiewicz was one of 361 students at the Polish School of Medicine, a school housed in the Edinburgh Medical School that enabled displaced persons from Poland to obtain a medical education during and after WWII.

In 1939, at age 17 Stanislaw escaped into Romania ahead of the invading German army. He joined the Polish Forces under France command in Syria. In 1940, upon crossing the frontier to Palestine, his unit came under British Command. He served in the Middle East from 1940-1942 and took part in the siege of Tobruk. In August 1942, he transferred to the Polish Navy, where he served on destroyers escorting convoys for two years before being discharged in 1944 to serve the remainder of his service on land, until 1949.

In his spare time, and while stationed on land, Stan took the opportunity to obtain an education. He completed secondary school in Glasgow in 1943, and was accepted into the Polish School of Medicine in 1944, where he met fellow students Danuta Niedzielska (marrying her in 1948) and her sister Mieczyslawa.

Due to the impending closure of the Polish School in 1949, Stan’s cohort had to be transferred to other medical schools across the UK. Stan was transferred to the University of Leeds, where he completed his medical degree in 1950. In 1952, he emigrated first to the USA, specialising in anaesthesiology at Boston City Hospital and then to Antigonish, Canada, working for the next 33 years as an anaesthetist in several hospitals in Nova Scotia and as a lecturer at Dalhousie University until retirement.