Written by: Prof. Beverley Chalmers
Gisella Perl (1) , an Hungarian Jewish doctor was born in Sighet, Hungary on December 10, 1907. She grew up in an observant Jewish family with six siblings, studied medicine in Berlin, and qualified as a gynaecologist. In 1944, she and her family were sent to Auschwitz. Only she survived, as well as a daughter of hers who was hidden and cared for by a non-Jewish family. While in Auschwitz-Birkenau she assisted multiple women to either abort their pregnancies or to give birth and then to murder the newborn so as to save the mother’s life. After the war, she moved to the USA where she practiced obstetrics for 43 years, helping women give birth to about 3,000 children. She ultimately moved to Herzilya, Israel, where she and her surviving daughter lived. In Israel, she worked at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. She died on December 16, 1988 (age 81 years),in Herziliya.
https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/gisella-perl/
Pregnancy in Auschwitz-Birkenau
Women admitted to Auschwitz-Birkenau, had to undress and the
SS inspected their breasts and their bellies for signs of pregnancy.
Women with stretch marks on their bellies were at risk of being sent to the gas
chambers. So were those who were overweight and had bellies that were mistaken for pregnancy (2). SS doctors asked pregnant women to identify
themselves with promises of clean housing and added food while they
await birth (3). As Gisella Perl, a doctor in Auschwitz-Birkenau, testified
in 1948:
one of the SS chiefs would address the women, encouraging
the pregnant ones to step forward, because they would be
taken to another camp where living conditions were better.
He also promised them double bread rations so as to be
strong and healthy when the hour of delivery came. Group
after group of pregnant women left Camp C. Even I was
naïve enough, at that time, to believe the Germans, until
one day I happened to have an errand near the crematories
and saw with my own eyes what was being done to these
women.
They were surrounded by a group of SS men and women,
who amused these helpless creatures by giving them a taste
of hell, after which death was a welcome friend. They were
beaten with clubs and whips, torn by dogs, dragged around
by the hair and kicked in the stomach with heavy German
boots. Then, when they collapsed, they were thrown into
the crematory – alive (4).
Perl was so horrified that she determined to save pregnant women by
helping them to abort their pregnancies. “I ran back to camp and going
from block to block told the women what I had seen. Never again was
anyone to betray their condition.” As she wrote:
First I took the ninth-month pregnancies, I accelerated the
birth by the rupture of membranes, and usually within one
or two days spontaneous birth took place without further
intervention. Or I produced dilatation with my fingers,
inverted the embryo and this brought it to life…After the
child had been delivered, I quickly bandaged the mother’s
abdomen and sent her back to work. When possible, I
placed her in my hospital, which was in reality just a grim
joke…I delivered women in the eighth, seventh, sixth, fifth
month, always in a hurry, always with my five fingers, in
the dark, under terrible conditions…By a miracle, which
to every doctor must sound like a fairy tale, every one of
these women recovered and was able to work, which, at
least for a while, saved her life (5).
Camp inmates were not the only ones to have abortions: Gisella Perl
was forced to perform an abortion on Irma Grese (sometimes Greze or
Griese), the infamous camp guard, at gunpoint. Although she fully
expected to be killed afterwards as she knew too much, she was spared.679
Olga Lengyel’s memoir confirms this experience reporting that she
assisted Dr Perl throughout the procedure (6).
The doctors involved in saving women’s lives through inducing birth
or committing infanticide were under no delusions of heroism regarding
their murderous actions. Nor did any of the doctors who later reported they had contributed to the deaths of babies in utero or after birth – Gisella Perl, Olga Lengyel, Sara Nomberg-Przytyk – believe they were committing anything other
than murder. Their decision – usually taken with extreme difficulty (7) –
was to preserve the lives of mothers who would otherwise certainly have
been killed.
Other doctors in Auschwitz-Birkenau made similar decisions: Lucie
Adelsberger saved whatever poisons she could find to kill newborns in
order to save their mothers. They did not have enough. “It’s amazing what
newborns can bear. They simply slept off otherwise lethal doses of poison,
sometimes without any apparent damage. We never had enough for
them (8).” As she wrote, “Doctors who had been trained to preserve life had
to become killers to help their patients survive.” (9) 682
Bibliography
Adelsberger, Lucie. Auschwitz: A Doctor's Story. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995.
Chalmers, Beverley. Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women's Voices under Nazi Rule. UK: Grosvenor House Publishers, 2015.
Lengyel, Olga. Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz. First Academy Chicago edition, 1995 ed. Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1947.
Lipstadt, Deborah. "Introduction." In Auschwitz: A Doctor's Story. Edited by Lucie Adelsberger. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995.
Perl, Gisella. I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz. Reprint edition 2007 ed. North Stratford, NH: Ayer Company Publishers, 1948.
Video:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gh0bScla7uQ?app=desktop
Film:
Out of the Ashes. Showtime Networks, USA. Directed by Joseph Sargent.2004.113 mins.
Contributed by:
Beverley Chalmers (DSc(Med); PhD)
Steering Committee: Women in the Holocaust international Study Centre (WHISC), Israel
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
(1) Extracts taken from Beverley Chalmers. Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women’s Voices under Nazi Rule. (Surrey, UK: Grosvenor House Publishers, 2015)
(2) Beverley Chalmers, Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women's Voices under Nazi Rule (UK: Grosvenor House Publishers, 2015), 100.
(3) Gisella Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, Reprint edition 2007 ed. (North Stratford, NH: Ayer
Company Publishers, 1948), 81-2.
(4) Perl, 80-82.
(5) Perl, 81-2.
(6) Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys: A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz, First Academy Chicago edition, 1995 ed. (Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1947), 161.
(7) Perl, 81.
(8) Lucie Adelsberger, Auschwitz: A Doctor's Story (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995), 100-01.
(9) Deborah Lipstadt, "Introduction," in Auschwitz: A Doctor's Story, ed. Lucie Adelsberger (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995), xxii.