Dr. Gisella Perl was a Hungarian-Jewish doctor who was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi concentration and killing centre in German-occupied Poland, in May 1944. She was forced to work under the authority of Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death.” 1,2
At the camp, the doctor faced impossible choices that no mother would want to face. The German soldiers would beat and kill pregnant women and their fetuses upon finding out they were pregnant. To stop the soldiers from taking their unborn children, Dr. Perl would perform illegal abortions. She would pull out the fetus herself since there were no medical supplies at the camp.
Her bravery, strength, and sacrifice made her an unforgettable and inspiring heroine, whose legacy and light will shine forever.
Gisella Perl was a determined young woman who wanted to make a difference in the world by studying medicine before becoming a victim of the Holocaust. She was born in a small Hungarian village called Sighet in 1907, which is now Romania. Sighet was occupied by Hungary from 1940 to 1944, and Hungarian and German authorities deported approximately 13,000 Jews from the town and surrounding villages to Auschwitz in May 1944. 1,2
Gisella came from a pious Jewish family and graduated from high school at the age of 16 as the best female Jewish student.
Her father, Maurice Perl, did not want her to study at the university because he felt that higher education would lead her away from religion. However, the father came around and agreed to let his daughter study medicine and become a qualified gynecologist. After finishing her studies, she went back to Hungary with her husband, a surgeon named Ephraim Krauss.
In 1944, Nazi Germany invaded Hungary and captured Gisella, her husband, and their two children. Before the deportation, Perl’s daughter was left in the care of a non-Jewish family. Perl was deported to Auschwitz with other family members, from whom she was subsequently separated upon arrival at the camp. Her daughter survived the Holocaust, while her husband and son perished. 2,3
Dr. Perl’s medical skills saved many people’s lives, including Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” who made her his prisoner-doctor. At the camp, Mengele was in charge of the women’s section and forced Dr. Perl to work under horrific conditions with no anesthetic, water, medicine, or bandages.
Perl started treating sick people at the camp by dressing their wounds and fixing split skulls or bodies injured by the camp guards. Later, Mengele discovered that she was an expert in performing abortions and ordered her to report any pregnant women to him. Mengele told the women that they would be sent to other camps with better conditions while his people took better care of them.
However, Dr. Perl later discovered that Mengele did not intend to give them better treatment. Instead, they were to be subjected to terrible medical experiments or sent directly to the gas chambers. Pregnant Jewish prisoners faced extreme danger at Auschwitz, where the Nazi regime subjected prisoners to systematic murder and medical abuse. Perl later described the decisions she made to protect pregnant women from this fate. 2
After learning of Mengele’s plans for the pregnant women at the camp, Dr. Perl decides to do whatever it took to save the mothers by performing illegal abortions. During the day, she worked as an assistant to Mengele while secretly doing abortions at night.
With no proper equipment to perform the abortions, Perl would remove the fetus with her bare hands. She recounted that she had no choice but to continue with her nighttime mission because it was the only way she could save the mothers. Decades later, she wrote about her horrific experiences doing secret abortions while working at the camp in her book, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz. First published in 1948, the memoir documented her experiences as a Jewish physician imprisoned at Auschwitz and the desperate measures she took to help fellow women prisoners survive. It remains an important first-person account of women's experiences under Nazi persecution. 2,3
She described how psychologically challenging the task was for her and said that her hands had saved many mothers’ lives. Her decisions involved profound moral dilemmas. As a physician working under genocidal coercion, without normal medical supplies or freedom to practise medicine, she faced circumstances in which ending a pregnancy could offer a woman a chance of survival. These were not ordinary medical decisions made under normal clinical conditions. 2
Still, the circumstances surrounding the pregnant camp survivors called for such difficult measures because there were no other ways of saving them. Amazingly, the secret abortions gave the mothers a fighting chance, with most of them walking out of the camp’s horrors alive despite the discouraging and strenuous labor required.
The Soviet forces advanced into Nazi-occupied territories in early 1945, and the camps were evacuated. Dr. Perl was first sent to Hamburg and then to Bergen-Belsen, which the British forces later liberated in April 1945. At Bergen-Belsen, she continued using her medical skills to help prisoners; the medical-history literature recounts that she delivered a Jewish prisoner's baby on the day of liberation. 2
At the end of the war, Dr. Perl searched for her family but learned that her husband and son had perished during the Holocaust. Gisella attempted to take her life in 1947 but was sent to a convent in France to heal from the trauma and grief.
Later in life, Dr. Perl was invited to the United States on a temporary visa. The immigration officials were skeptical of her and wondered why a qualified doctor with no affiliation with the Nazi Party would survive Auschwitz. Fortunately for Dr. Perl, notable personalities such as Congressman Sol Bloom and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helped her navigate the challenging times.
President Truman authorized legislation for Dr. Perl to become a permanent resident after her heroic efforts during the Holocaust. Additionally, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt convinced the doctor to resume her medical practice. Dr. Perl went on to work at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City as one of the few female doctors at the time. She became one of the best infertility experts in the country. A peer-reviewed medical-history article reports that she established an obstetric practice in Manhattan, later specialized in infertility at Mount Sinai Hospital, and delivered more than 3,000 babies. 2
Furthermore, Dr. Perl was finally reunited with her surviving daughter, Gabriella, and later migrated to Israel, where she died at the age of 81.
1. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Auschwitz: Key Dates.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz-key-dates
2. Weisz, George M., and Konrad Kwiet. “Managing Pregnancy in Nazi Concentration Camps: The Role of Two Jewish Doctors.” Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal 9, no. 3 (2018). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6115479/
3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Holocaust in Sighet.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/sighet
4. United States Department of Justice. Matter of Josef Mengele Report. October 1, 1992. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-hrsp/legacy/2011/02/04/10-01-92mengele-rpt.pdf
(OG/MF/MSM)