Gisella Perl | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Gisella Perl on the cover of her Auschwitz memoir first published in 1948 | |
| Born | (1907-12-10)10 December 1907 |
| Died | 16 December 1988(1988-12-16) (aged 81) |
| Nationality | Hungarian Jewish; |
| Occupation | Doctor |
| Known for | Holocaust memoirI was a doctor in Auschwitz OCLC 2355040 |
| Spouse | Ephraim Krauss (murdered in the Holocaust) |
| Children | 2 |
Gisella Perl (10 December 1907 – 16 December 1988) was aHungarian Jewishgynecologist deported toAuschwitz concentration camp in 1944, where she helped hundreds of women, serving as an inmate gynecologist for them. She worked without the bare necessities for practicing medicine. Perl survived theHolocaust, emigrated to New York, and was one of the first women to publicize the Holocaust experience in English, in her 1948 memoirI Was a Doctor in Auschwitz. She became a specialist in infertility treatment atMount Sinai Hospital, New York and eventually moved with her daughter to live inHerzliya,Israel, where she died.
Gisella Perl was born and grew up in Máramarossziget (nowSighetu Marmaţiei), then part of Hungary, which after theTrianon peace treaty of 1920 became part of Romania (and was again part of Hungary in 1940-44). In 1923, when she was 16, she graduated from secondary school first in her class, the only woman and the only Jew. Her father, Maurice Perl, refused to allow her to study medicine at first, because he feared she was going to "lose her faith and break away fromJudaism". He relented a few months later.[1]
Perl became a successful and well known gynecologist in Sighetu Marmaţiei. She married an internist, Dr. Ephraim Krauss,[2] and practiced until 1944, whenNazi Germany occupied her hometown during itsinvasion of Hungary and deported Perl to theAuschwitz concentration camp along with her family.Josef Mengele gave her the task to work as a gynecologist within the women's camp, attending to inmates without bare necessities such asantiseptics, clean wipes, or running water.
She is best known for temporarily saving the lives of hundreds of women by aborting their pregnancies, as pregnant women were often beaten and killed or used by Dr.Josef Mengele for his experiments.[1]
She was transferred toBergen-Belsen, her final Holocaust destination, and soon liberated. She found that her husband, only son, her parents and her extended family had all been murdered in the Holocaust. She tried to commit suicide by poisoning herself and was sent to recuperate in a convent in France until 1947.[3]
In March 1947 she arrived inNew York City on a temporary visa to lecture, sponsored by the Hungarian-Jewish Appeal and the United Jewish Appeal. She moved to an upper class neighborhood in New York. New York Representative Sol Bloom unsuccessfully petitioned the Justice Department for permanent residency of the United States.[3]
On March 12, 1948,President Truman signed a bill allowing Perl to stay in the US. The INS interrogated her on suspicion of assisting the Nazi doctors of Auschwitz in carrying out human rights abuses. In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt convinced her to start practicing medicine again. She began work as a gynecologist atMount Sinai Hospital, New York, starting as the only female physician in labor and delivery, and becoming a specialist ininfertility treatment.[3] In 1951, at the age of 44 she was granted U.S. citizenship.
Perl was the sole author or coauthor of nine papers on vaginal infections published between 1955 and 1972.
In June 1948, Gisella Perl published the story of her incarceration at Auschwitz, detailing the horrors she encountered as an inmate gynecologist. The book was titledI Was a Doctor in Auschwitz and included Perl's description of operations on young women's breasts without anesthetics, using a knife as her only instrument.[4] She describedIrma Grese, a 19 year oldAufseherin or warden from Auschwitz who observed the procedures and derived pleasure from their suffering.[5] She wrote that Grese's “face [was] clear and angelic and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine.”[6] Her words helped paint a picture of Grese when the notorious guard was put on trial and subsequently executed.
Perl's memoir was one of at least eight similar accounts by female prisoners, corroborated by the testimonies of other women.[7]
The infirmary encounters with Irma Grese had first been described byOlga Lengyel, a Hungarian Jewish woman and surgical assistant imprisoned at Auschwitz, in her 1947 bookFive Chimneys, originally published in French.[8][9] Lengyel was the first survivor to have her testimony published in English, wrote Zoë Waxman.[9]
Perl's account of the treatments was virtually identical in every detail to the court testimony of Dr. Olga Sulima, an inmate physician at Auschwitz from the Soviet Union, according to historian Bernard Braxton.[10]
Perl was later reunited with her daughter, Gabriella Krauss Blattman, whom she managed to hide during the war. In 1979, both moved to live inHerzliya,Israel. Perl died in Israel on December 16, 1988, at the age of 81.[3]
In 2003, a film entitledOut of the Ashes was released. It was based upon the story of Dr. Perl's life, and starredChristine Lahti as Dr. Perl.
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