Dr Michał Lityński was a military doctor, a head of the Department of Internal Medicine of the Hospital of the Sanitary Training Centre in Warsaw located in the Ujazdowski Hospital. After the outbreak of the WWII, Dr Lityński became a commander of the Military Hospital in Garwolin, and then a head of the 4th Department of Internal Medicine in the Ujazdowski Hospital. He joined the resistance movement as a soldier of the Home Army.
In his ward, he was hiding wounded underground soldiers Jews who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto. With the help of Dr Lityński many were rescued: among others, the chief pastor of the Polish Army Colonel Feliks Gloeh who after his release gave Dr Lityński about 160 certificates of birth and christening sealed by the Evangelical-Augsburg parish church in Łomża. Dr Lityński handed more than 50 of those certificates to Jews hiding in the Ujazdowski Hospital.
He was carrying out the action of helping Jews who had managed to escape from the ghetto together with Dr Tadeusz Radwański. He visited the seriously ill in their hiding-places and, if necessary, he gave them shelter in the basement of the department of internal medicine – in a long, twisting basement corridor (with no windows, but with light). In two separate rooms there were up to 6 people at one time.
In his report from 1948, Szymon Bieberstein expressed his gratitude to Dr Lityński for his medical help for his family (wife, children and father-in law, who were hiding in Warsaw under assumed names) during the occupation.
He was active as a doctor in the structures of the Home Army. Dr Lityński took part in the Warsaw Uprising because of which he had difficulties after the war to obtain work appropriate to his high qualifications.
