HaKoach Presents:
“GENIUS LOCI. Pinkus/Panusz” with participation of Henryk Panusz

Credits:

Production, script and substantive supervision
Eliza Gaust
Dawid Gurfinkiel

Direction, editing, sound, light, photos
HaWa [Grzegorz Habryn & Aneta Wawrzoła]

Script and substantive supervision
Magdalena Tomczak

Interviews and substantive supervision
Marcin Żychliński

Music
Bartek Bartosiak

Lector
Monika Buchowiec

Drone photos
Mikołaj Zacharow

Translation/subtitles
Przemysław Rak

Script consultations
Tamara Skalska

Partners:
• Marek Edelman Dialogue Center in Łódź
• Jewish Community in Łódź
• Just Lodz
• Musical Theater in Łódź TME Polówka

Honorary patronage of the Embassy of Israel in Poland

The materials presented in the film come from:
• private archive of Henryk Panusz
• State Archives in Łódź
• YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York Special thanks:
• Jolanta Szuman
• Grzegorz Geglaubter
• Anna Korzon-Wnukowska Łukasz Zachwieja

Film financed by the EVZ Foundation (Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft) as part of the project “PoMoc&Kontakt. Commitment to Survivors in Łódź, Poland”, Łódź 2023

Doc. dr hab. Henryk Panusz was born on June 26, 1929 in Warsaw in an intelligentsia family. In the years 1929-1944, he lived in Warsaw and attended schools there, and during World War II he continued his education in clandestine junior high school courses. In the period 1943-1944 he belonged to the Gray Ranks, the armored company of the Home Army “Iskra”, and in the Warsaw Uprising he took part in local defense. After the uprising, after a short stay in Żyrardów, in February 1945, he and his mother moved to Łódź. In 1946, he received a secondary school-leaving certificate at the Municipal High School for Adults – the current III LO im. T. Kosciuszko. In the same year, he began studying chemistry at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Łódź. In 1952 he received a Master’s degree in philosophy in chemistry. He carried out his master’s thesis on nucleic acids under the supervision of prof. dr. hab. Antoni Dmochowski. Already in 1947 he started working as an assistant at the Department of Physiological Chemistry of the Medical Faculty of the University of Lodz, and from 1950 at the Medical Academy. In 1961, he received a doctoral degree on the basis of a dissertation entitled “Effect of deoxyribonucleic acid on trypsin digestion of histones”, supervised by prof. dr hab. A. Dmochowski.

In 1961, he received a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation, which enabled him to deepen his knowledge of the biochemical basis of cancer during his stay at the Rockefeller Institute in New York in the Alfred E. Mirsky Laboratory. In the years 1963-1968 doc. dr hab. Henryk Panusz continued his research work as an assistant professor at the Department of Physiological Chemistry of the Medical University of Lodz.

In 1968, obtaining a grant for modern research equipment, he created the first Molecular Biology Laboratory in Poland at the Scientific and Research Center of the Medical University of Lodz, dealing with DNA isolation and studying the mechanisms of inheritance, of which he was the head in the years 1968-1975.
After habilitation in 1975, he took the position of the head of the Department of Biochemistry of the Medical Faculty of the Medical Academy. In the years 1983-1993 doc. dr hab. Henryk Panusz stayed in the USA, working successively at the Biological Chemistry Department of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of California in Davis with E. Morton Bradbury, and the Molecular Pharmacology Laboratory of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda with William M. Bonner. Then he collaborated with Zbigniew Darżynkiewicz at the Department of Cell Biology at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in New York. In the years 1989-1993, as the head of the Research Department at Steller Biosystems in Columbia Maryland, he worked, among others. on immunological drug detection. Research interests doc. dr. hab. H. Panusz focused on issues related to the biochemistry of the cell nucleus, especially histones and nucleic acids. For the scientific achievements of doc. dr hab. H. Panusz consists of 43 original experimental papers, 5 review papers, 45 papers and reports at conventions, conferences and symposiums, including 7 at international congresses.

Doc. dr hab. H. Panusz, having retired since 1993, still takes an active part in scientific and social life. He was one of the translators of the Polish edition of the textbook “Human Molecular Biology. The molecular basis of phenomena in health and disease” R.J. Epstein, published in 2005, edited by professors A. Lewiński and P.P. Liberski by Wydawnictwo Czelej Sp. z o. o. Henryk Panusz is a scientific advisor to the Polish company Biotechnology Consulting. He is a founding member and president of the “Social Committee for Supporting the Construction of the Central Warsaw-Łódź Airport” association, existing since 2009 under the name of Towarzystwo Integracji Transportu, promoting the idea of building a transcontinental airport coupled with the Polish and European high-speed rail network. In addition, he is the president and founder of the Lodz Christian Charity Society, a founding member of the Institute of Tolerance, president of the Monumentum Judaicum Lodzense Foundation and was a long-term president of the Lodz branch of the Polish Evangelical Society.