![]() Had Mengele permitted her to remain with her patients in Birkenau, she would have been liberated months earlier. The theme of cruel contradiction continues. While the book centers on the author's experiences in Auschwitz-Birkenau, it also recounts her struggle to survive when she is torn from her friends there and sent first to Berlin, then to a labor camp near Hamburg, and finally to Bergen-Belsen. Auschwitz through Perl's eyes is a land of extremes, oppressive heat and bitter cold, unfathomable cruelty and extraordinary compassion. A smile brings a desperate prisoner through another day. Conversation functions as a healing balm margarine is rumored to be a miracle drug. Perl's memoir recounts acts of kindness as unforgettable as the episodes of cruelty. A piece of string to tie one's shoes becomes the difference between life and death, and Perl must decide how high a price she will pay for that piece of string. A bag of diamonds has value only when it can purchase three uncooked potatoes women entering the hell of Auschwitz receive flimsy party dresses that barely cover their bodies. Perl, who had treasured the moments when she could bring new life into the world, becomes a secret abortionist, killing babies to save their mothers' lives. This opening vignette presents one of the themes of the memoir: in a world gone mad, things are not what they appear. Yet she saves lives, with compassion and conversation as her only tools. It is a cruel assignment, for Perl receives neither medicine nor instruments. A colleague of Josef Mengele, Kapezius compels Perl to become the camp gynecologist. The veneer of civility is stripped away, and he is unmasked as the monster he is. Kapezius reminds the family that not all Germans are Nazis and urges them to keep up their courage, for one day soon the war will end.įive months later, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Perl, torn from her family and stripped of everything she owns, encounters Dr. His eyes fill with tears when Perl recites the poetry of Heine and Lessing, and he is lavish in his praise following a violin performance by the Perls' gifted son. Kapezius seems a reassuring reminder of German culture and humanity. Overcoming her suspicions, Perl invites him to spend an evening at her home. In December 1943, as the German army was suffering heavy losses on the Eastern Front, Perl is visited in her office by an erudite and charming German physician, Dr. Perl's life is transformed into a labyrinth of suffering, defined by unpredictable and cruel twists and turns, where nothing is what it seems. Kapezius," sets the stage for all that follows. Each of the short chapters conveys striking portraits of Nazi oppressors and those they persecuted. Her memoir, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, is brief but unforgettable. ![]() The Nazi invasion of Hungary ended her days of normalcy. Trained as an obstetrician and gynecologist, she worked alongside her surgeon husband, operating a hospital in Sighet. ![]() After decades out of print, this new edition will ensure the crucial place of Perl's testimony on Holocaust memory and education.Before the Nazi invasion of Hungary, Gisella Perl led a rewarding and successful life as physician, wife, and mother. These efforts including infanticide and abortion, topics that would remain silenced for decades and, unfortunately, continue to be marginalized from all too many Holocaust accounts. Josef Mengele in his infamous so-called clinic and using her position to save the lives of other women prisoners. One of the memoir's major historical contributions is Perl's account of being forced to work alongside Dr. Unlike many important Holocaust memoirs, Perl's writing is both graphic in its horrific detail and eloquent in its emotional responses. Perl's memoir is also significant for its inclusion of the Nazis' Roma victims as well as in-depth representations of Nazi women guards and other personnel. It is also the first memoir by a woman Holocaust survivor and establishes the model for understanding the gendered Nazi policies and practices targeting Jewish women as racially poisonous. Perl accomplished this by representing her life before imprisonment, in Auschwitz and other camps, and in the struggle to remake her life. With writing as powerful as that of Charlotte Delbo and Ruth Kluger, her story individualizes and therefore humanizes a victim of mass dehumanization. Gisella Perl's memoir is the extraordinarily candid account of women's extreme efforts to survive Auschwitz.
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