Helped Liberate Dachau Camp
George Tievsky, 89, an Army physician who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 and who later owned a
radiology practice in downtown Washington for nearly 50 years, died April 16 at his home in Chevy Chase. He had pancreatic
cancer.
In 1944, Dr. Tievsky was commissioned a medical officer in the Army and shipped to the European theater in anticipation of the
invasion of Germany. He served in the 66th Field Hospital in southern France and Germany, attached to the Seventh Army.
He was a doctor in the first medical unit to liberate the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945 and spent six weeks tending to
survivors of Dachau and the Allach forced labor camp. Only with the passage of time was he able to talk about what he saw
there.
I was a personal witness of the liberation of Dachau, he told a group in 2001. It was so unspeakable, and I could not speak of it
for 40 years.
In a discussion for the Holocaust documentary To Bear Witness, Dr. Tievsky recalled the horrors of what he saw.
I walked the streets of the pleasant, pretty little village of Dachau, and I could smell the smell of the death camp. I said to myself,
how could this be?
An observant Jew, he spoke extensively on his war experiences at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and to military,
educational and civic groups throughout the D.C. area. His experiences were recorded in lengthy wartime letters to his fiancee
and in a recorded interview with the Shoah Foundation in the 1990s. He recently had been writing a book and compiling his
letters.
Dr. Tievsky, the son of immigrants from the Ukraine, moved in 1920 to the District, where his father bought a grocery store on
Gale Street NE. Four years later, his family moved to Tenleytown in Northwest Washington, and his father opened the Wisconsin
Market with the family living above the store.
As a young boy, Dr. Tievsky was active in a Boy Scout troop composed largely of children of Jewish immigrants.
He was a graduate of Western High School and received a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from George Washington University
in 1939. He graduated from the university's medical school in 1943, followed by a nine-month wartime internship in radiology.
After Dachau's liberation, Dr. Tievsky was ordered to the Pacific theater in preparation for an expected invasion of Japan. On Aug.
6, 1945, his troop ship was told to return to New York after the bombing of Hiroshima.
After World War II, he served medical residencies at Gallinger Municipal Hospital -- a predecessor of D.C. General Hospital --
and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Washington. He operated a private radiology practice in downtown Washington from
1950 to 1995, where his patients ranged from local residents to diplomats and senior government officials.
Dr. Tievsky was an early advocate of radiation safety regulations in the 1950s and 1960s and testified before government
officials, pushing for legislation seeking a balance between safety and sound public health policy.
The author of numerous scientific articles on radiation safety, he published the book Ionizing Radiation: An Old Hazard in a New
Era in 1962. For these efforts, he was elected to membership in the American Roentgen Ray Society and was made a fellow of
the American College of Radiology.
Dr. Tievsky served as in-house radiologist for the Department of State and for 25 years was chief of radiology with Group Health
Association. A clinical professor of radiology at George Washington University medical school, he taught until 2002. He raised
funds for construction of GWU's medical school and was a life member of the Luther Rice Society, a group of university donors.
Active in Jewish civic and philanthropic organizations, Dr. Tievsky promoted bonds for the state of Israel, the United Jewish
Appeal and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, where he was an advocate for the disabled. He was a past
president of Phi Delta Epsilon, a medical fraternity.
In the 1950s, Dr. Tievsky was a founding member of Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County. In 2001, he and his wife were
among the founding members of Kol Shalom, a congregation in Rockville affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative
Judaism.
He was a gifted photographer, an enthusiastic gardener and a member of the Men's Gardening Club of Montgomery County.
Survivors include his wife of 62 years, Priscilla Tievsky of Chevy Chase; five children, Dr. Andrew Tievsky of Cleveland, Seth
Tievsky of Washington, Karla Tievsky of Atlanta, Charles Tievsky of Oakton and Robert Tievsky of Bethesda; a brother, Marvin
Tievsky of Washington; and 10 grandchildren.