Gynecologist, Gisella Perl (circa 1900 – 1988) risked her life to try to save that of many women during her deportation to Auschwitz, performing thousands of abortions.
(Warning:this article deals with torture, extreme abuse, experimentation inflicted on prisoners - especially pregnant - in Auschwitz during the Second World War. It can be difficult to read)
Deportation
Gisella Perl was born into a Jewish family around 1900 in Sighetu Marmației, a city at the time Hungarian but which became Romanian following the First World War. She quickly shows herself to be lively and brilliant, eager to continue her education and learn medicine. Her father fears that her studies will divert her from her faith, but she manages to convince him that she will remain faithful to her religion. Getting to be able to study, she became a gynecologist and married a surgeon, with whom she had two children.
In 1940, during the Vienna arbitrations, Hungary, an ally of Nazi Germany, annexed the northern half of Transylvania, including the town of Sighetu Marmaţiei, where Gisella worked and lived with her family. A first deportation of Jews took place in 1942. In March 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary. Between May 16 and 22, 1944, the remaining 13,000 Jews in the Sighetu Marmaţiei ghetto were sent to Auschwitz by the Hungarian authorities. When the Nazis entered the city, Gisella managed to hide her young daughter from neighbors who were not Jews. On the other hand, her husband, her son, their family and herself did not manage to escape deportation.
Auschwitz
After a grueling eight-day journey, Gisella and her loved ones arrive at the Auschwitz camp, where they are separated and placed in different barracks. A well-known and recognized gynecologist, Gisella is requisitioned to work at the women's camp hospital, under the authority of Dr. Josef Mengele. Powerless to physically relieve the patients of the camp hospital with the few means at her disposal, Gisella strives to support them by offering them compassion, words of comfort and prayers. Originally, she must supervise blood samples from prisoners for the benefit of the German army, and discovers there the cruel treatment suffered by the prisoners. But "the angel of death" Josef Mengele quickly realizes that Gisella is a gynecologist and sees in her science an opportunity to obtain information on pregnant prisoners. He orders her to report any pregnancies among the inmates, who he says will be moved to a camp more suited to their specific needs.
Gisella witnessed the violence suffered by pregnant women and the experiments, even vivisections, carried out by Mengele. She herself had to attend surgical operations carried out without anesthesia, without suitable equipment, without disinfectant, without hygiene rules. The only solution she sees to protect her fellow prisoners from cruel treatment that inevitably leads to death is to help them abort discreetly, going against her principles and her faith. In an attempt to save – at least temporarily – pregnant prisoners from Mengele's experiments, Gisella performed around 3,000 clandestine abortions during her time at Auschwitz. If the pregnancy is too advanced, it causes childbirth; the baby born premature dies almost instantly. Later, she will say:“No one will ever know what it meant to me to destroy those babies, but if I had not done it, both mother and child would have been cruelly murdered” (No one will ever know what it meant to me to destroy those babies, but if I hadn't, both mother and child would have been cruelly murdered).
Liberation
As the end of the war approached, when the Germans evacuated Auschwitz, she was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen camp. When the camp was liberated by the Allies in April 1945, Gisella was helping a prisoner give birth. She stays in Bergen-Belsen until the fall, hoping to hear from her family, then sets off on foot through Germany to try to find them. Soon, she learns that her husband was beaten to death shortly after arriving at the camp, and that her son was killed in the gas chambers. Desperate, she tries to kill herself.
“God, you owe me a life”
After a period of healing in France, Gisella left for the United States in 1947. Suspected of having assisted the Nazis, she had to defend herself and have her former fellow prisoners testify on her behalf. In June 1948, she published "I was a doctor in Auschwitz", where she told her story and the atrocious treatment she witnessed. Her story spreads and Gisella meets Eleanor Roosevelt, who encourages her to return to medicine. Becoming a gynecologist again in New York, she begins to give birth again; before entering the delivery room, she repeats the same prayer:“God, you owe me a life–a living baby.” (God, you owe me a life - a live baby).
After a few years in New York, Gisella decides to settle in Israel to keep a promise made to her husband just before their separation, that of being in Israel. Learning that her daughter, Gabriella Krauss Blattman, whom she had been able to hide before the roundup, survived, she joined her in Herzilya in Israel.
Gisella lived with her daughter in Israel until her death in 1988.