"Their feat of comradeship commenced on the very first day. Illustrious scientists who, however, had no idea of medicine, academicians, correspond- corresponding members of the scientific academies, doctors, candidates, men of the same generation as the 54-year-old Landau as well as his pupils and their still more youthful pupils - all volunteered to act as messengers, chauffeurs, intermediaries, suppliers, secretaries, members of the watch and, lastly, porters and labourers. Their spontaneously established headquarters was located in the office of the Physician-in-Chief of Hospital No. 50 and it became a round-the-clock organizational centre for an unconditional and immediate implementation of any instruction of the attending physicians.
"Eighty-seven theoreticians and experimenters took part in this voluntary rescue team. An alphabetical list of the telephone numbers and addresses of any one and any institution with which contact might be needed at any instant was compiled, and it contained 223 telephone numbers! It included other hospitals, motor transport bases, airports, customs offices, pharmacies, ministries, and the places at which consulting physicians could most likely be reached.
"During the most tragic days when it seemed that 'Dau is dying' - and there were at least four such days - 8-10 cars could be found waiting at any time in front of the seven-storey hospital building. . . .
"When everything depended on the artificial respiration machine, on 12 January, a theoretician suggested that it should be immediately constructed in the workshops of the Institute of Physical Problems. This was unnecessary and naive, but how amazingly spontaneous! The physicists obtained the machine from the Institute for the Study of Poliomyelitis and carried it in their own hands to the ward where Landau was gasping for breath. They saved their colleague, teacher, and friend.
"The story could be continued without limit. This was a real fraternity of physicists. . . "
By E. M. Lifshitz who wrote if for the Russian edition of Landau's Collected Papers via Mechanics by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz.
Nothing really needs to be said.
Abdullah