David Keilin, 1887-1963

Abstract

David Keilin was born on 21 March 1887, in Moscow, where his parents were residing temporarily at that time. Soon afterwards however he returned with his parents to Poland where his father, a successful businessman, had his office and owned some land. He was the fourth child of a family of seven, and the youngest of three sons. School days in Warsaw Although afflicted early in his childhood by asthma, an ailment which continued to trouble him in later life, he retained very happy memories of the school days spent in Warsaw. As a delicate boy he was educated up to the age of 10 by a governess at home, and by his mother whose memory he treasured as that of a wise and kind and at the same time highly energetic woman. In 1897 he entered the Gόrski Gymnasium in Warsaw, a private Polish high-school (the state schools at that time were Russian). This establishment directed by Mr Gόrski, achieved distinction in Polish history of that period both for its high standards of education as well as on account of its patriotic spirit, which on more than one occasion brought its teaching staff and the pupils into conflict with the Tsarist government. Nothing unfortunately remains today of the records of that school which, with the rest of the city, was burned and razed to the ground by the Nazis after the Warsaw rising of 1944. In September 1904, three months after his graduation from the Gόrski Gymnasium, David Keilin left Warsaw to seek education abroad, first in Liège and later in Paris, planning eventually to become a doctor of medicine.