"I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz" the monumental book of the Jewish doctor from Auschwitz, Dr. Gisella Perl. New York 1987 edition - dedicated and signed copy by the author to Dr. Levin, a year before her death.
Gisella Perl [1907-1988] was a Jewish gynecologist who survived the Holocaust and became well-known for the many abortions she performed on women in Auschwitz in an attempt to save their lives. She was born in 1907 in the town of Sighet. After completing her secondary education, she continued her studies in medicine at the University of Cluj, specializing in gynecology.
During the Holocaust, after the Germans invaded Hungary in 1944, Perl was transferred with her family to the ghetto in their city and was later sent to Auschwitz. Due to her medical background, shortly after arriving in Auschwitz, she was sent to work in the infirmary, where she treated many patients every day with minimal equipment. However, she became more well-known for the work she did outside of her regular duties: performing abortions. At one point, Dr. Mengele asked her to report to him on every pregnant woman with a promise that the pregnant women would receive better living conditions in another camp. As a result, the pregnant women themselves went to Mengele and told him that they were pregnant, and at the same time, 292 women declared that they were pregnant. On the same day, Dr. Mengele ordered all of these women to be killed. When Dr. Perl found out that these women had been thrown into the crematorium, and that some of them were used for medical experiments, she decided to take matters into her own hands and personally perform abortions on the pregnant women who had not yet been sent to their deaths in order to save their lives or speed up the births of the women who were already in advanced stages of pregnancy. She hid the babies that were born in the infirmary or smuggled them out of the camp in various ways. The abortions or births were carried out at night, in secrecy, with her exposed hands and without suitable medical equipment, putting her own life at risk for an extended period of time. Later, she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where conditions were much harsher than in Auschwitz due to a typhus epidemic that was raging in the camp. She remained there until the camp was liberated.
In one of the most harrowing passages of her book, Dr. Perl recounts that when the British forces entered Bergen-Belsen, she was in the midst of delivering the baby of a partisan Jewish woman who had managed to hide for a while, but was ultimately caught by the Nazis and sent to Bergen-Belsen. This baby was the first Jewish child born in Bergen-Belsen. As she was delivering the baby, she heard the cries of joy from the prisoners who were being liberated by the British forces. And if that weren't enough, she tells how, during the delivery, the mother was in real danger and thanks to Dr. Perl's devotion, who jumped from her place to the first soldier she saw, and grabbed his arm to get water for the birthing mother, he helped her, and thus she also saved the life of the birthing mother. After a short time, she learned that the soldier who had helped her was General Gleen Hughes, who was in command of the Allied forces that entered the camp.
In her book, among other things, Perl describes the experiments that Dr. Mangala performed on the camp prisoners and in particular on the dwarf prisoners - experiments that she witnessed herself.
After the war, and upon learning of the death of her family, including her husband and son, she attempted suicide but failed. In 1947 she emigrated to the United States. Following a meeting with the wife of President Roosevelt, who urged her to stop punishing herself and return to practicing medicine, she joined the medical staff at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where she delivered 3000 babies and became an expert in the field of fertility.
In 1979, Pearl immigrated to Israel as a result of an old vow she made. It was during the war, after a four-day journey in a crane to Auschwitz, where she and her father and husband swore that they would meet in Jerusalem when the time came. Pearl settled in Herzliya, where she lived with her daughter, who had been hidden during the war with a non-Jewish family, and continued to contribute her time and knowledge to the gynecology department at the Shaare Zedek hospital. Pearl referred to herself as the "ambassador of the six million" and was known to recount her wartime experiences at any opportunity. She passed away in 1988. Her important book was adapted into a film in 2003, starring Christine Lahti called "Out of the Ashes"
178 p. 21 cm. Very good condition.
