![]() Her work investigated treatments for vaginal infections in pregnant women, examined unintended effects of the contraceptive pill, and explored ways of treating and diagnosing thrush. Between 19, Perl authored or co-authored nine academic papers on the treatment of diseases common in pregnancy. She was granted citizenship in 1951 and began work as a gynecologist in New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, delivered around 3,000 babies in New York alone, and became an expert in infertility treatment (Staff, 2021). Upon recovery, Eleanor Roosevelt invited her to lunch and encouraged her to start practicing medicine again. Only then would she learn the fate of her beloved husband and son who died just before liberation, and she tried to commit suicide. She assisted with rescue and recovery efforts before finally leaving the camp in search of her family. It was my own child I was killing again and again to save the life of a woman.” Her memoir goes on to detail the horrors she witnessed and documents her move from Auschwitz to Hamberg and then Belgen-Bernsen, where she was eventually liberated. I loved those babies not as a doctor, but as a mother. After years and years of medical practice, childbirth to me was still the most beautiful and most wonderful miracle of nature. In her memoir I Was a Doctor at Auschwitz, Perl said, “No one will ever know what it meant to me to destroy those babies. She vowed then that no woman would suffer such fate because of her condition if she could help it and she started aborting the babies. One night while running an errand, Perl saw naked pregnant women surrounded by soldiers, thrown on their knees, being punched, kicked, torn apart by dogs, dragged around by their hair, and then thrown into the crematory alive. encouraged pregnant women to step forward with the promise of better conditions, more food, and safety for their unborn child. Mengele removed organs from people without anesthetic, and if one twin died the other would be murdered (Walker, 2015). Josef Mengele, infamous for deciding who would live or die with his pointed finger, and the barbaric experiments he performed on men, women, children, and babies, especially twins. Many others were too damaged and humiliated to discuss it. Perl testified at Grese’s trial of her inhumane and sexually abusive behavior, bringing to light the sexual abuse that took place in the camps. The hospital was overseen by Irma Grese, a twenty-one-year-old Nazi. Perl relied on kind words to give the prisoners hope when they felt they could no longer go on. Gisella wondered when she would be sent with them. Even still, there were many days when the block overseer would walk in and clear the “hospital,” sending everyone in it to their deaths. She performed more than 3,000 abortions because pregnancy was an automatic death sentence for women in Auschwitz. She made makeshift splints and casts for broken bones. She saved her margarine and put it on open wounds. The prisoners were treated for typhus, malaria, dysentery, pneumonia, sexually transmitted diseases, open sores, and lice, which infected the entire camp. All she had was an old pocketknife that she sharpened on a rock. She had no water, disinfectant, sutures, gloves, or anesthesia. She was given a room with a table, some makeshift beds, and paper bandages. ![]() Perl was the head women’s doctor at the camp. In the following weeks, she would be starved, beaten, threatened, ridiculed, humiliated, and dehumanized. Her parents were sent to the gas chambers immediately and Dr. Perl and her family were stripped, shaved, and tattooed with a number before being sent to barracks and assigned to work. She married a doctor and had a son and a daughter when they were raided by the Nazis in 1944. After she made certain promises to him, she was allowed to pursue her dream and became a gynecologist. She dreamed of going to medical school but her father was reluctant to send her, worried she would abandon her strong religious upbringing. Gisella Perl was a Romanian Hungarian woman born on December 10, 1907, to a Jewish well-to-do family. She did it to save the lives of the women in the compound, for she was a doctor at Auschwitz and a prisoner herself. No one would know about this baby, or the others who would meet the same fate. Her hands were cracked and covered in mud and dirt as she delivered the baby, broke its little neck, closed its eyes, and buried it in a hole outside. Risking it all to save strangers-remembering Gisella Perl June 15, 2021ĭr.
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