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134. Dr Gisella Perl - Abortionist at Auschwitz · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

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Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
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Speaker 1: The history podcast That's not Your History Class with me
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Speaker 1: your host Katie Charlewood, history Harlotte and reader of books,
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Speaker 1: starting today's episode off with a correction. You heard me,
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Speaker 1: a correction. So I got an email from the lovely Lisa,
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Speaker 1: who had done a lot of research into currency changes
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Speaker 1: and inflation, and so Membo back in Nancy Wake when
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Speaker 1: I said that she had inherited two hundred pounds from
0:35
Speaker 1: her aunt, who was like the black sheep of the family,
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Speaker 1: and this gave her what like three grand in today's money,
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Speaker 1: Well that was incredibly incorrect because it wasn't three grand
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Speaker 1: in today's money. It would be close to twenty thousand
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Speaker 1: Australian dollars, which, when you put it that way, kind
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Speaker 1: of makes more sense because at least this gives us
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Speaker 1: an idea as to why she was able to go
1:02
Speaker 1: and do all this journey in right, and how she
1:05
Speaker 1: was able to get to the US and then over
1:09
Speaker 1: to London and then to France. Like, it just makes
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Speaker 1: sense that answers a lot of those questions. So yeah, listen, listen, listen.
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Speaker 1: Money changes are tough, Okay, they stump even the best
1:25
Speaker 1: of us sometimes, but yeah, that makes sense. Like here's
1:29
Speaker 1: the thing. Sometimes I'm wrong about stuff. Sometimes I mistake
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Speaker 1: the maths, and here we are. You know. I had
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Speaker 1: somebody complain. They were like, why is it maths? And
1:41
Speaker 1: it's like, because it just is. We shortened it and
1:45
Speaker 1: then we pluralized it. Okay, Like that's it. Also. In addition, furthermore,
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Speaker 1: I'm on tour and soon, so if you want to
1:54
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1:59
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2:06
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2:08
Speaker 1: the same live show twice. So if you want to
2:11
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Speaker 1: swell time. And I appreciate this support. Like, if you
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Speaker 1: bunch of reasons, so you can always donate to my patreon.
2:36
Speaker 1: So my patreon does have an option which is like
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Speaker 1: one dollar, one year, one pound kind of thing. It's
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Speaker 1: like the lowest single currency denominator called keeping the lights on,
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Speaker 1: and it's just like one buck per month, and it
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Speaker 1: just helps keep the lights on. It keeps me able
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Speaker 1: to continue making content for you. But I know what
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Speaker 1: you're thinking. You're thinking, Kerry, your gibber jabber in fact me,
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Speaker 1: in fact you, I will. But first we've got to
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Speaker 1: get our source on. Our sources are I Was a
3:16
Speaker 1: Doctor in Auschwitz by doctor Gisella Perl, Managing Pregnancy in Nancy,
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Speaker 1: Concentration Camps, The Role of two Jewish Doctors by George m.
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Speaker 1: Weiss and Conrad Kiat, Doctor's Pregnancy, Childbirth and Abortion during
3:33
Speaker 1: the Third Reich by Tessa Chuluch. Auschwitz, A doctor's eyewitness
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Speaker 1: account by Miklos Newsley, Five Chimneys A woman survivor's True
3:44
Speaker 1: Story of Auschwitz by Olga Lingel, doctor Gisella Peerl, A
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Speaker 1: Hero in Hell by Brynn Holland, Out of Death A
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Speaker 1: Zest for Life by Nadine Brozen. The Abortionist of Auschwitz
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Speaker 1: by doctor Yvette ald Miller. And of course we have
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Speaker 1: our old favorites History dot com and Biography dot com.
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Speaker 1: I was eating comfortably good then let's begin before I
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Speaker 1: go any way into this story anyway about doctor Gisella
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Speaker 1: Pel in her life and what she went through, I
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Speaker 1: am smacking you all with a massive trigger warning. Here's
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Speaker 1: the thing. Nothing I say in this episode, nothing I
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Speaker 1: illustrate to you, will ever truly convey the horrors that
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Speaker 1: these people were subjected to. I will never be able
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Speaker 1: to truly show that to you, which in a way
4:44
Speaker 1: is a very good thing, because I don't think most
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Speaker 1: of us could handle those nightmares. But there's a trigger warning.
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Speaker 1: It has violence, sexual violence, abuse, and murder of children.
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Speaker 1: It's got everything, and if you're not feeling up to it,
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Speaker 1: if you don't think this is something you can handle.
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Speaker 1: Right now, we're gonna come back next week with just
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Speaker 1: an absolutely ridiculous woman, just a total bitch. Like we're
5:14
Speaker 1: gonna go, We're gonna have some fun with just a
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Speaker 1: woman from history. We're gonna have a great time. Okay,
5:21
Speaker 1: this week we're gonna be a bit more serious, and
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Speaker 1: next week we're gonna have a bit more fun. So
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Speaker 1: here we are doctor Gizella Pel, abortionist of Auschwitz. On
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Speaker 1: the tenth of December nineteen oh seven, Gisella Pearl was
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Speaker 1: born in the town of Sigt, Hungary. Well it was
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Speaker 1: part of Hungary then but now it's actually part of Romania.
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Speaker 1: But at the time Hungarian Cigit around this time had
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Speaker 1: a pretty large Jewish community. More than a third of
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Speaker 1: the population were Jewish, and there were loads of Jewish
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Speaker 1: own businesses. There were dozens of synagogues, and it was
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Speaker 1: a good life for Gisella growing up. She came from
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Speaker 1: a loving Jewish family. She was one of seven children.
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Speaker 1: She had six siblings and they studied the Torah for
6:25
Speaker 1: hours a day and they sang every Friday evening for Shabbat,
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Speaker 1: and her childhood was very typical of the time. Her mother, Frida,
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Speaker 1: was a homemaker who apparently made the best chestnut cake
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Speaker 1: and cold cherry soup, which is something I'm going to
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Speaker 1: be looking up, by the way. And her father, Moish,
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Speaker 1: he ran a business and he earned enough because he
6:53
Speaker 1: was able to have a maid and a governess and
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Speaker 1: the family. They were very focused on education. And Jisella
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Speaker 1: she was bright, you know, she was, but like all
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Speaker 1: of the Peril children were smart cookies. I think all
7:11
Speaker 1: but one had doctorates, you know by the time they
7:15
Speaker 1: got older. But Gizella, she showed promise from a young age,
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Speaker 1: and she was ambitious. Like Gisella, spoke a whole host
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Speaker 1: of languages Hungarian, German, French, Romanian and Yiddish. Of course,
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Speaker 1: when Gisella was sixteen, she was the only girl and
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Speaker 1: the only Jewish person to graduate from her secondary school
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Speaker 1: top of class. And she knew from the get go
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Speaker 1: that she wanted to go into medicine. But her dad,
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Speaker 1: he wasn't too on board with this. See, he was
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Speaker 1: worried that she would go into medicine and in science
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Speaker 1: she would lose her faith. And this was like a
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Speaker 1: really belief at the time that you could not have religion,
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Speaker 1: You could not have faith in something if you believed
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Speaker 1: in science, as if the two were mutually exclusive, which
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Speaker 1: they're not. That there are ways to have faith and
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Speaker 1: still believe in science. It's not one or the other.
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Speaker 1: I remember watching a TV show many years ago and
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Speaker 1: there was a Muslim doctor in it, and I was
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Speaker 1: like how somebody asked him, like how could you be
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Speaker 1: a doctor and also be a man of science. He's like,
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Speaker 1: Allah created the world and science is a way for
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Speaker 1: us to understand him, and like, I mean, I'm not
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Speaker 1: a religious person, I'm a recovering Catholic of Jewish heritage.
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Speaker 1: I know, right, I'm a bundle of weird things. But
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Speaker 1: I think it'd be amazing to have faith because it
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Speaker 1: gets you through a lot of stuff. But yes, her father,
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Speaker 1: he was worried she was going to swap out faith
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Speaker 1: for science. And after a few months, like Gisilla knows,
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Speaker 1: this is what she wants to do, and you know,
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Speaker 1: and she's pressing it and pressing it, and then one
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Speaker 1: day she comes back to him holding a prayer book
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Speaker 1: and she says to him, I swear on this book
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Speaker 1: that whatever life will take me, under whatever circumstances, I
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Speaker 1: shall always remain a good, true Jew. And with that
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Speaker 1: he relented and she was allowed to go to medical school.
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Speaker 1: So years later, when she's actually a practicing doctor and
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Speaker 1: she gets her first few payments from her first patients,
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Speaker 1: she buys her father a prayer book and has his
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Speaker 1: name engraved on it, which is such a sweet little
10:00
Speaker 1: turn around in a way of her to sort of
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Speaker 1: reinforce that promise that she made to him all those
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Speaker 1: years before. So, yes, teenage Gisella Perl enrolled in medical
10:12
Speaker 1: school and studied for years in Berlin, which at the
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Speaker 1: time was the place for Jewish physicians to train like.
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Speaker 1: It was the place to go, It was where you
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Speaker 1: got the best possible medical training. Like during the years
10:31
Speaker 1: of the Weimar Republic, more than half of the doctors
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Speaker 1: in Berlin were Jewish. Jewish doctors were well woven into
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Speaker 1: the fabric of the German medical scene at the time.
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Speaker 1: But when the National Socialist Party or as you and
10:50
Speaker 1: on them, the Nazis rose to power in nineteen thirty three,
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Speaker 1: Jewish doctors were increasingly stripped of their positions. They were
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Speaker 1: removed from universities, professional societies, and of course the government.
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Speaker 1: During this time, though Peerl had managed to return back
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Speaker 1: to Hungary, she returned to and she got married to
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Speaker 1: Ephraim Krauss, a great surgeon and an even greater husband.
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Speaker 1: Together they had two children, a son and a daughter.
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Speaker 1: Back in her hometown. As again ecologist, Gizilla earned the
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Speaker 1: trust and the respect of her community. As the years passed,
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Speaker 1: life became increasingly difficult for Jewish people in Hungary. The
11:40
Speaker 1: rise in anti Semitism would have them removed from their homes,
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Speaker 1: their businesses, etc. And in March nineteen forty four, when
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Speaker 1: the Nazis finally invaded Hungary, Gisella and most of her
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Speaker 1: family were rounded up and sent to the crowded Segid ghetto.
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Speaker 1: Gizella was rounded up with most of her family, her siblings,
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Speaker 1: her parents, her husband, and her son. Her daughter was
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Speaker 1: actually hidden with a non Jewish family and was kept
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Speaker 1: there and so didn't actually end up in the ghetto.
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Speaker 1: Within mere months, more than four hundred thousand Jewish people
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Speaker 1: would be deported from Hungary, amongst them practically all of
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Speaker 1: the Jewish community of Segit. In May nineteen forty four,
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Speaker 1: the Jewish ghetto in Segit was being liquidated, with all
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Speaker 1: of the surviving Jewish people sent to Auschwitz. Thousands of
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Speaker 1: terrified people were forced into overcrowded cattle cars bound for
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Speaker 1: Auschwitz Berkaneu. After a journey that seemed to take forever.
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Speaker 1: Cramped like sardines in a tin, frightened and bewildered, the
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Speaker 1: train finally stopped and they stepped out of the way.
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Speaker 1: Ndolah's cattle cars and armed guards began separating families. Jizilla
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Speaker 1: managed to hold her husband for one last time before
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Speaker 1: they were pulled apart, and they made a promise to
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Speaker 1: each other, we will meet someday in Jerusalem. And so
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Speaker 1: those who had exited the trains, they were separated into
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Speaker 1: two groups, those who would live and work and those
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Speaker 1: who would die. Amongst those was Jizella's father, who would
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Speaker 1: go to the gas chamber holding the prayer book and
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Speaker 1: his daughter had gifted him years before. So not only
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Speaker 1: were they separated into who would live and who would die? Well,
13:48
Speaker 1: I say who would live and who would die, who
13:50
Speaker 1: would die straight away in a gas chamber, and who
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Speaker 1: would live and be involved in slave labor until they died.
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Speaker 1: And they were also separated into male and female. So
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Speaker 1: of the female group of who would survive, all of
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Speaker 1: the doctors were to let themselves be known. They were
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Speaker 1: to announce their presence. And here's the thing, because the
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Speaker 1: Nazis are dirty, theeven bastards, what they had done is
14:27
Speaker 1: before they had got anybody onto the train is they
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Speaker 1: had told all of the medical professionals to ensure that
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Speaker 1: they brought their medical kits with them, all of their instruments,
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Speaker 1: all their gear. And when doctor Gisella Perl identified herself,
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Speaker 1: her medical bag was ripped from her hands, and it
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Speaker 1: took her a moment, but she recognized the Nazi doctor
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Speaker 1: who took it from her doctor Victor Capasius, a man
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Speaker 1: whom she and her husband had hosted for dinner a
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Speaker 1: year or so before, before she knew he was a
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Speaker 1: member of the ESSs. He smelled at her coldly and
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Speaker 1: told her that she was going to be the camp
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Speaker 1: gaynecologist and not to worry about her instruments because her
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Speaker 1: medical kit belonged to hymn Now And as she entered
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Speaker 1: through the gates of Auschwitz her medical bag taken from her,
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Speaker 1: her head shaved, and on her right forearm a tattoo
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Speaker 1: with her new identity prisoner number two five four zero four.
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Speaker 1: Along with four other doctors and four nurses, Gisella Pearl
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Speaker 1: was charged with establishing a hospital in Auschwitz Group C,
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Speaker 1: which was for female slave laborers. With her medical bag
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Speaker 1: taken from her, she was given a knife to work with,
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Speaker 1: just one, and she had to sharpen it on a stone.
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Speaker 1: There was no medicine. Sometimes there was like aspirin, like
16:21
Speaker 1: a very very light painkiller, if anything, and so there
16:25
Speaker 1: was no medicine, and if they were really lucky, some
16:29
Speaker 1: paper bandages. However, even though they had no tools or
16:34
Speaker 1: equipment or even cleaning equipment. The Nazis insisted that the
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Speaker 1: hospital be kept spick and span, and so every single
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Speaker 1: day Gisella and her colleagues would sweep the floor. I
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Speaker 1: say sweep as if scrape, more so with their bare hands,
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Speaker 1: like they were just ragging dirt off the floor, because
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Speaker 1: if there was any mess, if there was anything just
17:08
Speaker 1: out of sorts, it would result in a beating. Now
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Speaker 1: I remember Gisella, she's a gynecologist, but that is not
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Speaker 1: what she's doing in Auschwitz Berkenew. Nope, she was treating
17:23
Speaker 1: prisoners who were sick with typhus, pneumonia, and a whole
17:27
Speaker 1: host of other diseases. She was operating on sort of
17:32
Speaker 1: deep wounds and cuts and lacerations that were made by
17:36
Speaker 1: Nazi whips, all of these gouges that had come infected,
17:43
Speaker 1: and she was setting the bones of prisoners who had
17:46
Speaker 1: been beaten and abused by their Nazi guards. Gizella would
17:52
Speaker 1: later write those first weeks at Auschwitz were made unbearably
17:57
Speaker 1: miserable by the various skin eruptions caused by the weather, exposure,
18:02
Speaker 1: deficient food, and lack of water for drinking and washing.
18:06
Speaker 1: The licee plague made these eruptions more serious. We scratched
18:10
Speaker 1: in our sleep, even if we were strong enough to
18:12
Speaker 1: refraine from it while awake, and the sores became infected,
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Speaker 1: until our whole body was covered with deep, crater like wounds.
18:21
Speaker 1: Because everyone was living in such cramped, dirty conditions and
18:27
Speaker 1: they were so weak from everything else, it was the
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Speaker 1: perfect area for disease and illness to spread. Like there
18:37
Speaker 1: were reports of the area's flooding and sort of everywhere
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Speaker 1: from the quote unquote hospital to the or their barracks,
18:49
Speaker 1: their sleeping areas having two to three inches of water
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Speaker 1: at the bottom, like it was an absolute Petrie dish
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Speaker 1: to be living in. And so they're dealing with all
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Speaker 1: of these diseases and Joseph Mengel, who's just he was
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Speaker 1: a monster, Like he was an absolute monster, and he
19:11
Speaker 1: was the head doctor at Auschwitz, and whenever a place
19:16
Speaker 1: callt a very contagious disease, whenever anything became rife, he
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Speaker 1: would just quote liquidize it. So he would have everybody
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Speaker 1: just sent to the gas chamber, and he would have
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Speaker 1: the whole barracks, the whole sleeping area just hosed down,
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Speaker 1: cleaned out, and then what do you know, He'll be
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Speaker 1: filled up again with another group of prisoners. Gisella was
19:46
Speaker 1: assigned to care for thirty two thousand women who were
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Speaker 1: kept alive for slave labor. There. Six months later, when
19:54
Speaker 1: all of these women were basically walking skeletons, she witnessed
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Speaker 1: the liquidation of them. No longer useful, they were sent
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Speaker 1: to the gas chamber to make way for a batch
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Speaker 1: of new slave laborers. Even faced with this abject horror,
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Speaker 1: Gizella did what she could to protect those in her
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Speaker 1: care when she had nothing else to give. When she
20:22
Speaker 1: had no medicine, no equipment, she did her best to
20:27
Speaker 1: heal with her words, to provide any sort of comfort
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Speaker 1: to people, and she also hoodwinked some Nazis. So when
20:41
Speaker 1: prisoners in her hospital were told to provide blood samples
20:46
Speaker 1: like it got to the point that Gizella and the
20:49
Speaker 1: other doctors knew that the Nazis were testing them to
20:52
Speaker 1: see if they had any contagious diseases, and if they did,
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Speaker 1: they were going to be well killed, simply they were
21:00
Speaker 1: going to be killed. And so to protect them, Gisella
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Speaker 1: and the other doctors gave samples of their own blood.
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Speaker 1: And there would be days where the ess would come
21:11
Speaker 1: in and just completely empty out the hospital and send
21:16
Speaker 1: all of the sick and infirm to the gas chamber.
21:19
Speaker 1: And they started getting wise as to when this would happen,
21:23
Speaker 1: and so they would strategically send a few back to
21:27
Speaker 1: the barracks so that their lives would be saved for
21:32
Speaker 1: at least a little while longer. Doctor Gizella Peril tried
21:36
Speaker 1: to bring a glimmer of hope in a time of
21:42
Speaker 1: abject misery, because seeing not content with just being physically abusive,
21:49
Speaker 1: they were emotionally abusive as well. In Auschwitzberg, now there's
21:54
Speaker 1: a Jewish day of mourning called tush Abov, and you're
21:58
Speaker 1: supposed to be so and there's to be no music.
22:03
Speaker 1: And so the guards got the prisoners to sit in ashes,
22:13
Speaker 1: ashes from the crematorium, and they told them that the
22:17
Speaker 1: ashes were the last remnants of their family, of their parents,
22:21
Speaker 1: of their husbands, of their children. And so they had
22:26
Speaker 1: a concert. They got musicians to play for them johntay
22:29
Speaker 1: joyous music which they're not supposed to listen to music anyway,
22:33
Speaker 1: but also celebrate they music. It was just another way
22:39
Speaker 1: to demoralize and bring down the prisoners in the camp.
22:45
Speaker 1: And they did this while they sent more and more
22:49
Speaker 1: people to the crematorium. The Nazis never saw Jewish people
22:54
Speaker 1: as human like. The whole point was to humanize them,
22:58
Speaker 1: demoralize them, to mean them, room them, to make them
23:01
Speaker 1: shells of what they were. But doctor Jozella Pearl, she
23:07
Speaker 1: was determined to not let that happen, and so she
23:11
Speaker 1: started this like ritual. So each night she would whisper
23:18
Speaker 1: to whoever was near her and they would fantasize about
23:22
Speaker 1: what a perfect day had been like they had gone shopping,
23:25
Speaker 1: they had enjoyed a delicious meal, or gone to the
23:29
Speaker 1: theater or a museum, and they would just take moments
23:33
Speaker 1: to remember life outside Auschwitzberg. In there, doctor Gizella Peerl
23:40
Speaker 1: was doing whatever she could to try and survive Auschwitz,
23:46
Speaker 1: but that struggle was just going to get harder because
23:52
Speaker 1: Joseph Mengel he was soon to discover her profession and
23:57
Speaker 1: that she was again ecologist. So she was pulled from
24:01
Speaker 1: her regular medical duties and was brought to be part
24:05
Speaker 1: of his team, and he provided her a new task
24:12
Speaker 1: to examine every pregnant woman and to report to him directly.
24:17
Speaker 1: He said that they were going to be sent to
24:19
Speaker 1: a special camp, but they would get extra bread rations,
24:22
Speaker 1: they would get milk, and that it was going to
24:26
Speaker 1: be like a get out of jail free card. Now
24:31
Speaker 1: this I mean you could say they were knaive, but
24:35
Speaker 1: this was believable because there was a camp that allowed families,
24:40
Speaker 1: that allowed children. It was basically this propaganda camp tears In,
24:46
Speaker 1: like the name was, and it was used for like
24:50
Speaker 1: un inspections to let them know that it was like, oh,
24:52
Speaker 1: look at how what a wonderful life they're living. And
24:56
Speaker 1: so pregnant people were allowed to live in some of
25:00
Speaker 1: these camps. Children were allowed to be born in some
25:03
Speaker 1: of these camps, you know, as a way of showing
25:08
Speaker 1: that it wasn't as bad to completely divert any attention
25:13
Speaker 1: and let people think that. That's how they were treating
25:17
Speaker 1: Jewish people in all of their camps. And so Gizella
25:21
Speaker 1: fell for it. She was reporting pregnant people to him,
25:26
Speaker 1: to Mengil, and one day she learned the harsh truth
25:32
Speaker 1: of what was really happening. She was running an errand
25:37
Speaker 1: and she was going past the crematorium and she saw
25:41
Speaker 1: pregnant women being beaten with clubs. Guards were setting the
25:45
Speaker 1: dogs on them. And as soon as the women were
25:48
Speaker 1: down and they were not getting back up. They were
25:52
Speaker 1: thrown into the crematorium alive. And this flicked a switch
25:57
Speaker 1: in Gizella, like she absolutely legged it back to the
26:01
Speaker 1: barracks and she told them like, do not do not
26:07
Speaker 1: ever could tell anyone if you're pregnant. And she worked
26:11
Speaker 1: so hard to make sure that nobody, nobody came forward
26:14
Speaker 1: or said anything. She would do her best. But people
26:20
Speaker 1: were arriving to auschwitzberk now pregnant. Some were impregnated in
26:27
Speaker 1: the camp itself. Sometimes women were so emaciated that they
26:33
Speaker 1: would carry a pregnancy to term and they wouldn't show.
26:39
Speaker 1: They were so small that you wouldn't notice the pregnancy,
26:46
Speaker 1: and so sometimes things would go unnoticed. And for a
26:49
Speaker 1: lot of the women, between the physical and emotional stress
26:52
Speaker 1: and the malnourishment, missing their periods was part of the
26:57
Speaker 1: part was very normal to happen. But yes, some people
27:02
Speaker 1: arrived pregnant, a lot of them unknowingly, and others became
27:08
Speaker 1: pregnant in Auschwitz Berken Out. Remember how I said this
27:13
Speaker 1: whole episode was a trigger warning. I'm going to talk
27:16
Speaker 1: about essay now. In Auschwitz, like many of the other
27:20
Speaker 1: concentration camps, it wasn't unusual for women to be raped
27:25
Speaker 1: by the guards, by other prisoners, it happened, It was
27:33
Speaker 1: fucking awful. For some it was just a way to
27:37
Speaker 1: get their jollys, and for others, it was yet another
27:40
Speaker 1: way to demoralize these women, to make them suffer sexual violence.
27:48
Speaker 1: Some women were impregnated because sex in the camps could
27:53
Speaker 1: be a commodity to be traded. Even Gizella Peerl talks
27:57
Speaker 1: about how she was given a pair of men's shoes
28:00
Speaker 1: to wear at the camp and they were too big
28:03
Speaker 1: and she needed a lace for them, and the only
28:06
Speaker 1: place she could get a lace was from one of
28:09
Speaker 1: the other male prisoners, and she had gone there with
28:12
Speaker 1: her bread ration. She was offering her bread ration to trade,
28:17
Speaker 1: but he didn't want her bread, and so she had
28:21
Speaker 1: to give him something else instead in order to get
28:24
Speaker 1: the lace that she needed, because she needed her shoes
28:27
Speaker 1: to be able to do her job, like she would
28:31
Speaker 1: have been beaten within an inch of her life if
28:34
Speaker 1: they let her live, you know, if they'd seen her
28:37
Speaker 1: with no shoes in their hospital. And another way women
28:44
Speaker 1: became pregnant was in the search of a moment of normalcy,
28:51
Speaker 1: like some couples managed to meet and have moments of
28:57
Speaker 1: intimacy with each other was the only thing that made
29:01
Speaker 1: them feel human. And you can, I'd say, you could
29:05
Speaker 1: understand that, but I don't think any of us really could.
29:09
Speaker 1: The desperation for something that wasn't pure, unadulterated horror. And so, yeah,
29:22
Speaker 1: people got pregnant at Auschwitz, and doctor Peerl she wanted
29:29
Speaker 1: to make sure no one was pregnant in Auschwitz. Ever. Again,
29:41
Speaker 1: Gisella Pearl was forced to work alongside Joseph Mengel, I
29:45
Speaker 1: say alongside for Joseph Mengel, And that was when she
29:50
Speaker 1: saw what an absolute nott job this man was. Now.
29:56
Speaker 1: The thing about Joseph Mengel is he thought he was
29:59
Speaker 1: this amazing super scientist, that he was coming up with
30:05
Speaker 1: all of these amazing discoveries about the human body. But
30:10
Speaker 1: he was cuckoo for cocoa puffs like he was he
30:14
Speaker 1: was bananas, like off the rails, Like he was such
30:19
Speaker 1: a mad scientist that other Nazi doctors made fun of him,
30:26
Speaker 1: like everything he did, all of his weird experiments on twins,
30:31
Speaker 1: like he had an obsession with twins, like he raging,
30:36
Speaker 1: raging obsession with twins, And so he would do all
30:39
Speaker 1: these creepy experiments on them. He would use one as
30:42
Speaker 1: control and infect the other with contagious diseases. He would
30:46
Speaker 1: sew them together like some weird Siamese twins situation, and
30:53
Speaker 1: he would perform all of these horrific experiments on them.
31:00
Speaker 1: And he would send all of these reports back to
31:03
Speaker 1: the other sort of high ranking Nazi doctors, and they'd
31:07
Speaker 1: be looking through his notes, going, what the actual fuck
31:11
Speaker 1: is this bullshit? Like there wasn't really anything to be
31:16
Speaker 1: learned from his experience. Not that I'm justifying Nazi experimentation
31:21
Speaker 1: in any way, but like even the most hard ass,
31:28
Speaker 1: like proper deep into the whole Nazi propaganda machine who
31:35
Speaker 1: had fallen hook line and sinker in it, and we're
31:37
Speaker 1: doing all their weird shit, even they thought he was
31:42
Speaker 1: absolutely off his rocker, like they thought he was a
31:46
Speaker 1: dumb ass effectively, and here he was in charge of
31:52
Speaker 1: this massive death camp, and okay, trigger Warringen, you're gonna
31:59
Speaker 1: want to step forward like three minutes if you don't
32:04
Speaker 1: want to hear horrible, horrible things and go. So Joseph
32:11
Speaker 1: Mengel he had this obsession with twins, and so he
32:17
Speaker 1: was expecting there was one prisoner who he thought was
32:20
Speaker 1: going to have twins, and when she gave birth, he
32:26
Speaker 1: was so enraged that it was just one baby that
32:29
Speaker 1: he threw it into a fire in front of her.
32:33
Speaker 1: He would study birth and women giving birth, and when
32:38
Speaker 1: the baby was born, he would have it. He would
32:42
Speaker 1: perform experiments like have the mother's breasts bound up so
32:50
Speaker 1: that the baby could not feed. He wanted to see
32:55
Speaker 1: what would happen, how long it would survive, so on
32:58
Speaker 1: and so forth. He would perform vivisections, which is basically
33:04
Speaker 1: cutting pregnant women open at different stages of their pregnancy
33:09
Speaker 1: to see how the fetus was developing. Like he did
33:15
Speaker 1: all of this like with her anesthesia, without any of this,
33:18
Speaker 1: and just to let these women die like he would.
33:23
Speaker 1: At one point he had this like cruel Crow plot
33:26
Speaker 1: where he would allow like women to give birth. He's like,
33:30
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to let babies be born
33:32
Speaker 1: in Auschwitz. It's going to be fine. And so women
33:37
Speaker 1: would they would give birth, and they would save up
33:42
Speaker 1: their bread rations and they would swap them out for
33:46
Speaker 1: fabric and cloth so that they could make nappies and diapers,
33:49
Speaker 1: you know, and then mother and baby would be taken
33:58
Speaker 1: and thrown into the crematorium together. At one point, doctor
34:03
Speaker 1: Gisella Peril had two hundred and ninety two pregnant women
34:08
Speaker 1: in her care in her hospital, and Joseph Mengele showed
34:12
Speaker 1: up and took every single one of them and threw
34:17
Speaker 1: them in the crematorium, or he did throw them, he
34:19
Speaker 1: got other guards to throw them in the crematorium for him.
34:23
Speaker 1: Other times he would allow women to give birth, and
34:27
Speaker 1: after they did so, their newborns were taken from them
34:30
Speaker 1: and drowned in burrows of water in the next room. Sometimes,
34:35
Speaker 1: on the rare occasion where a child was born with
34:37
Speaker 1: blue eyes, its life was spared and they were then
34:41
Speaker 1: sent to a German family to race. All of this
34:47
Speaker 1: led Peril to the decision that she would have to
34:50
Speaker 1: help women to avoid the fate that Mengel had devised
34:54
Speaker 1: for them, and so when she became aware that a
34:57
Speaker 1: prisoner was pregnant, she would warn them that the SS
35:01
Speaker 1: if they discovered this, they would not only kill her,
35:06
Speaker 1: but the baby too. She would tape up the bellies
35:10
Speaker 1: to sort of hide the bump, and when that wasn't
35:14
Speaker 1: a possibility, she would perform abortions see Jewish law states
35:23
Speaker 1: that an abortion can happen if it is a threat
35:28
Speaker 1: to the life of the pregnant person, right if the
35:32
Speaker 1: life of the mother is affected. If it was a danger,
35:35
Speaker 1: then abortion was permitted under Jewish law. Okay, so another
35:40
Speaker 1: trigger warning. I'm going to talk about abortions. I mean,
35:44
Speaker 1: did you really think we were going to go through
35:46
Speaker 1: a thing called the abortionist of Auschwitz? And I'm not
35:48
Speaker 1: going to talk about abortions again? Probably want to skip
35:52
Speaker 1: forward like three minutes otherwise. So, she performed abortions at
35:59
Speaker 1: night in the hospital. Other times she would sneak out
36:04
Speaker 1: of the barracks and went through the camp, performing abortions
36:07
Speaker 1: in sort of corners and dirty floors. And if a
36:12
Speaker 1: woman was getting close to term, she would reach into
36:17
Speaker 1: her uterus with her fingers and break the membranes of
36:20
Speaker 1: the amniotic sac, which would accelerate the birth. If a
36:24
Speaker 1: woman wasn't very far along, she would dilate the cervix
36:27
Speaker 1: and remove the fetus with her bare hands. And on
36:30
Speaker 1: the occasion where women did not miscarry and they gave
36:34
Speaker 1: birth to a healthy baby, Gizella brought it upon herself
36:39
Speaker 1: to provide the child with a better death. Gizella was
36:44
Speaker 1: running on fumes. She was doing these secret abortions at
36:48
Speaker 1: night and then working for Mengele during the day. At
36:54
Speaker 1: one point she was commanded to deliver the first pair
36:57
Speaker 1: of twins born in Auschwitz for his special twin experiments.
37:04
Speaker 1: Gisella was in Auschwitz for seven months before she was
37:07
Speaker 1: transferred to a Nazi labor camp near Hamburg, and then
37:11
Speaker 1: in March nineteen forty five, she was transferred to bergen Belsen,
37:16
Speaker 1: a camp that somehow managed to be worse than Auschwitz.
37:22
Speaker 1: There was no crematoriums to burn the bodies. People were
37:27
Speaker 1: just left where they died, and then they were put
37:31
Speaker 1: into a heap, just like piles of bodies. Everybody was ill,
37:38
Speaker 1: there were lice, There was rats in the bed. There
37:41
Speaker 1: was no food, there was no medicine, there was no water.
37:44
Speaker 1: There was lice in everything. And she arrived there on
37:48
Speaker 1: the seventh of March, and on the eighth as she
37:53
Speaker 1: was walking through the narrow streets of bergen Belsen, she
37:57
Speaker 1: came across the corpse of her brother and her sister
38:01
Speaker 1: in law, and still she persisted. Gisella was put in
38:07
Speaker 1: charge of this hospital on Block three, where she had
38:12
Speaker 1: little to no tools or equipment or medicine, and her
38:17
Speaker 1: main goal there was to just comfort the dying. On
38:23
Speaker 1: the fifteenth of April nineteen forty five, this fifteen year
38:28
Speaker 1: old girl was brought in Marissa. She was a member
38:32
Speaker 1: of the Polish resistance and she was in labor and so,
38:38
Speaker 1: and while Jisella is helping this young woman deliver her baby,
38:43
Speaker 1: there was a huge commotion outside. British troops were liberating
38:49
Speaker 1: bergen Belsen. Marissa gave birth and very soon started to hemorrhage,
38:56
Speaker 1: and so Josella runs outside and just start flagging down troops.
39:02
Speaker 1: She finds one who speaks French, the very first Allied
39:06
Speaker 1: physician to enter bergen Belsen, Brigadier General Glenn Hughes, and
39:12
Speaker 1: he within half an hour manages to provide her with
39:17
Speaker 1: medicine and equipment so that she can save this young
39:21
Speaker 1: woman's life. And Gisella survived the Holocaust and so after liberation,
39:30
Speaker 1: after all this, she goes in search for her family.
39:35
Speaker 1: She walks through Germany for nineteen days. She learns that
39:41
Speaker 1: her husband had been beaten to death by Nazi guards
39:44
Speaker 1: just day before the liberation, and that her son was dead.
39:50
Speaker 1: Her father was dead, and she didn't know what happened
39:54
Speaker 1: to her daughter, Gabriella, and so she didn't know what happened,
40:00
Speaker 1: and she was too afraid to look for her. Like
40:04
Speaker 1: I think, if she didn't know, then there was always
40:07
Speaker 1: that possibility of hope. Gizella was so distraught over the
40:12
Speaker 1: horrific deaths of her husband and her son that she
40:17
Speaker 1: tried to take her own life. She tried to consume poison,
40:22
Speaker 1: but luckily it didn't take. And while it would have
40:27
Speaker 1: been easier to just stop and hide away and try
40:29
Speaker 1: to forget everything that happened to her, Gizella just wasn't
40:33
Speaker 1: that kind of person. She ended up contacting the US
40:37
Speaker 1: Department of Justice because she read in the papers that
40:40
Speaker 1: Mengel had been arrested, and she wanted to offer herself
40:45
Speaker 1: up as a witness to all the shit he did
40:48
Speaker 1: in Ouschwitz, you know, because she was a medical doctor
40:52
Speaker 1: under his command. Unfortunately, Mengel escaped Germany and fled to
40:58
Speaker 1: South America, first to Paraguay and then to Brazil, and
41:04
Speaker 1: he survived until nineteen seventy nine, when he died in
41:07
Speaker 1: a swimming pool accident while on holiday in a resort.
41:11
Speaker 1: When all the Nazi doctors and scientists and all the
41:15
Speaker 1: head honchos were being rounded up like the Nuremberg trials
41:18
Speaker 1: and such like. There was an accusation that doctor Gisella
41:24
Speaker 1: Pearl was a collaborator, that she had aided, helped and such,
41:30
Speaker 1: but so many people came forward and provided testimony that
41:36
Speaker 1: she was definitely not, that she had helped people, that
41:40
Speaker 1: she had saved lives, like one of her goals was
41:45
Speaker 1: to ensure that the pregnant woman in her care would
41:48
Speaker 1: not only survive, but to survive and be able to
41:52
Speaker 1: go on and have their families. And when it became
41:56
Speaker 1: clear that Gisella Pearl was not the villain in this scenario,
42:02
Speaker 1: she began traveling the world and doing talks and speaking
42:07
Speaker 1: about what she had witnessed, and she was raising money
42:09
Speaker 1: for Jewish refugees. And it gets to the point that
42:16
Speaker 1: first Lady Eleanor Roosevelt ends up inviting doctor Pearl to lunch,
42:23
Speaker 1: and like, she didn't want to go. She said she
42:25
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to go because it's you know, she's kosher,
42:28
Speaker 1: so she couldn't do that. And Eleanor Roosevelt, She's just like,
42:36
Speaker 1: make sure it's a kosher lunch, and so she invites
42:38
Speaker 1: her and she tries to get her to return to medicine,
42:42
Speaker 1: and she's like, I can't do it. Like you know,
42:46
Speaker 1: she just wanted to let everyone know what happened. She
42:50
Speaker 1: didn't want to let it be hidden. She wanted it
42:52
Speaker 1: to be clear what happened to those women in those camps.
42:59
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen forty eight she published her memoir,
43:03
Speaker 1: which was the very first to show the reproductive and
43:08
Speaker 1: sexual horrors that were inflicted upon women prisoners in the camps.
43:14
Speaker 1: President Harry Truman would later sign a special bill granting
43:17
Speaker 1: Perl permanent citizenship in the US, and doctor Gisella Peerl
43:23
Speaker 1: returned to medicine. She began working at the Mount Sinai
43:28
Speaker 1: Hospital in Manhattan on the labor floor, and she would
43:31
Speaker 1: go on to open her own practice on Park Avenue,
43:35
Speaker 1: a practice that was dedicated to helping women with infertility,
43:39
Speaker 1: many of which were Holocaust survivors who she had known
43:43
Speaker 1: in the camps. And when she was involved in a
43:47
Speaker 1: labor she would say a prayer every single time that
43:54
Speaker 1: this child would get the chance to live for all
43:58
Speaker 1: those who could not. Between nineteen fifty five and nineteen
44:02
Speaker 1: seventy two, doctor Gizella Pearl authored and co authored nine
44:09
Speaker 1: academic papers that looked into conditions and diseases that were
44:14
Speaker 1: common in pregnancy, and in nineteen seventy eight she was
44:19
Speaker 1: finally able to keep her promise to her husband Althayam
44:25
Speaker 1: se she found out that her daughter, Gabriella was still alive.
44:30
Speaker 1: She'd been hidden by a Protestant family, and she had
44:34
Speaker 1: survived the Holocaust, and so Gisella Pearl moved to Israel
44:42
Speaker 1: to live with her daughter and her grandson, where she
44:47
Speaker 1: also was reunited with her sister Rose, who would like
44:52
Speaker 1: travel to Israel in nineteen thirty eight to study. When
44:56
Speaker 1: she was there, she volunteered in genecology CLI in Jerusalem,
45:02
Speaker 1: and she continued to help deliver babies until her death
45:07
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight. I just found the quote here,
45:10
Speaker 1: actually the actual quote, the prayer that she did every
45:13
Speaker 1: single time she entered the delivery room. God, you owe
45:19
Speaker 1: me a life, a living baby. And on the sixteenth
45:25
Speaker 1: of December nineteen eighty eight, Gisella Pearl died at the
45:31
Speaker 1: age of eighty one, and so ends her story of
45:36
Speaker 1: the Abortionist of Auschwitz. So I think this is probably
45:39
Speaker 1: one of my shorter episodes. I mean I could have
45:42
Speaker 1: gone into more detail about some of the horrific experiments,
45:46
Speaker 1: but I chose not to do that. I just didn't
45:49
Speaker 1: feel it was appropriate at this time. And I really
45:54
Speaker 1: didn't want to detract from doctor Gisella Pearl's story her life,
45:59
Speaker 1: because she worked so hard to survive and to bring
46:04
Speaker 1: hope and she suffered. But it still felt really, really
46:09
Speaker 1: weird saying Israel instead of Palestine, Like, you know, it's
46:16
Speaker 1: weird because, by the way, free Palestine. Like, if you
46:21
Speaker 1: can listen to the story of Gisella Peerl and you
46:24
Speaker 1: can hear and understand the suffering, you should not be
46:28
Speaker 1: accepting and willing to look away from the suffering of
46:32
Speaker 1: what's happening to the people in Palestine now. But anyway,
46:37
Speaker 1: this is a story about a woman who, against all
46:41
Speaker 1: odds survived and helped others survive, and a woman who
46:46
Speaker 1: understood the abortion is healthcare now waiting to be review
46:52
Speaker 1: bombed for those statements, but you know, fuck it, Like
46:57
Speaker 1: we don't often discuss the gender based violence when it
47:02
Speaker 1: comes to things like the Holocaust. We see it as
47:05
Speaker 1: this one grandiose thing, this giant, all encompassing bubble that
47:12
Speaker 1: we don't look at too deeply. It. It's like when
47:15
Speaker 1: you look at any disaster, you look at numbers as
47:18
Speaker 1: if those numbers don't mean anything, when those numbers are people,
47:23
Speaker 1: human beings with their own thoughts and dreams and lives.
47:28
Speaker 1: In Auschwitz, like children were automatically sent to the gas chamber.
47:34
Speaker 1: I remember reading stuff for years like, I mean, I'm
47:38
Speaker 1: of Jewish descent, I had family escape the Holocaust. I
47:43
Speaker 1: had people not escape it, And like you're told it
47:50
Speaker 1: in such a way, and you learn it in such
47:52
Speaker 1: a way that sometimes your descends it as to it.
47:55
Speaker 1: And there's always one clip from this documentary that made
47:59
Speaker 1: me cry, and it was a group of children from
48:03
Speaker 1: a hospital and they're all being led into the camp
48:07
Speaker 1: and they're all sort of holding hands and they've got
48:10
Speaker 1: a bread roll in one hand and the nurse is
48:12
Speaker 1: leading them in and they're opening their bread room in
48:16
Speaker 1: this sort of table outside because they're expecting to come
48:21
Speaker 1: back out and get it. And these little kids, these
48:24
Speaker 1: sick kids, are all brought in one by one into
48:28
Speaker 1: the gas chamber. And yeah, like that got me. God,
48:40
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cry. Don't cry, you're on, you're on your podcast,
48:43
Speaker 1: don't cry. But yeah, and that when you take these
48:48
Speaker 1: small moments, it makes you very aware. And that for
48:52
Speaker 1: me was it. That was the small moment that took
48:54
Speaker 1: me and it really made it hit home, know as
49:01
Speaker 1: opposed to being desensitized by all of the the numbers
49:06
Speaker 1: because it's it's too big. Some things are just too
49:10
Speaker 1: big to grasp. And we act like history isn't repeating,
49:17
Speaker 1: but it keeps going around in circles. And we have
49:21
Speaker 1: strength and community, We have strength in each other and
49:24
Speaker 1: good everything else. But anyway, it is recommendation time. Let's
49:28
Speaker 1: move on before I start sobbing. So for watching you
49:35
Speaker 1: know what, I think we need to cheer ourselves up.
49:37
Speaker 1: So I think everybody should go watch Bring it On.
49:40
Speaker 1: It's an amazing film. It's got cheers, it's got people
49:45
Speaker 1: standing up to cultural appropriation. It's lovely. It's a good film.
49:49
Speaker 1: It's get Cursed and dunst in it. Eliza dishcu like.
49:54
Speaker 1: It's a it's a great movie. It's a great movie.
49:56
Speaker 1: Go Gabrielle Unions in it. She's fabulous, right, go watch it.
50:00
Speaker 1: It's fantastic for listening. Go listen to the wine and
50:06
Speaker 1: crime for those girls are amazing. If you want a
50:10
Speaker 1: pharaoh Hawg Summer. That's exactly what you need. And also
50:15
Speaker 1: for watching not we did watching already, for reading the
50:21
Speaker 1: Story of Witches by willow Wyncham And with that I'm
50:26
Speaker 1: going to bed you good night. Also actually no rate
50:29
Speaker 1: and review five stars. Just do it. If you write something,
50:33
Speaker 1: it will post me up the charts. You may as well.
50:36
Speaker 1: I mean share this, share with everybody, share with your friends,
50:39
Speaker 1: share with your enemies. And so with this I shall
50:43
Speaker 1: bege you good night, Adios au revoir. Wait is them
50:46
Speaker 1: my friends? Bye bye.