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Dr. Gisella Perl: The Angel of Auschwitz
36 Plays1 month ago
In this episodes, Grace delves into the harrowing yet inspiring story of Dr. Gisella Peal, known as the "Angel of Auschwitz." Through the lens of Perl's experiences, Grace explores the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust, the resilience of the human spirit, and the difficult choices made to preserve life amidst despair. This episode is a powerful reminder of the importance of remembering history to prevent its repetition. Trigger warning: This episode discusses sensitive topics including the Holocaust, child loss, and ab*rtion.
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Transcript
Introduction & Trigger Warning
00:00:14
Speaker
Hey everyone! Welcome back to another episode of Harlots and Horses. It's me, your host, Grace Artis, bringing you another episode. And I just want to apologize for the delay in getting this episode out to you.
00:00:28
Speaker
i have been traveling, going back and forth, essentially from Texas to the East Coast. And then I was dog sitting, so definitely could not record with a barking dog. Anyways, am really, really excited about this episode, not only for who the story covers, but how it is still, her story is still very relevant to today. All that being said, I do want to give a little bit of a trigger warning before diving into this episode. This episode is going to be covering and diving into a lot of the atrocities of the Holocaust.
00:00:58
Speaker
as well as dealing with child loss, abortion, and things along that nature. So if that is not what you're into, or you're just not in the mental headspace,
Introduction to Gisela Pearl's Story
00:01:09
Speaker
totally get it. Feel free to skip this episode.
00:01:11
Speaker
The person I am going to be covering today, i actually learned about her during one of my gender in Europe classes during grad school. we In this class, in this weekend class, we were covering gender in the Nazi party and specifically women in the Nazi party and how they were just as violent, just had atrocious tendencies as the men did and how that had previously gone undocumented. Now, while the person am covering, she was actually a member of the Holocaust.
00:01:45
Speaker
She went to Auschwitz, so she was not committing those the violent tendencies. She was affected by it, and she witnessed it firsthand. So this whole story is about her. And without further ado, we're going to dive into it.
00:01:59
Speaker
So who I'm covering today, her name is Gisela Pearl, and she was born in Seget, a city that was part of Hungary. And at 16 years old, she was the only woman and the only Jew to graduate from her secondary school class. So that was an achievement all in itself, but she didn't want to just stop there.
00:02:18
Speaker
She knew that she wanted to become a doctor from an early age. So after she graduated secondary school, she went on to become a doctor of gynecology. And that is kind of where our story starts. And she was very successful and she was very well known in and the town of Segette.
00:02:35
Speaker
Now, this is all going on and kind of the point where this all starts is 1944 and where I'm getting everything from her memoir. So it all starts in 1944.
00:02:49
Speaker
Now, Dr. Pearl would go on to say that in those days that she was replacing the work of several gynecologists and that she would help, you know, the young mothers bring into their babies into the world, trying to escape what was going on in the town of Seget at the
Life Under Nazi Occupation
00:03:05
Speaker
time.
00:03:05
Speaker
The Nazi party was there, but her and her family, along with other Jews in the community, at this point, because 1944, they thought that being in Hungary, um would keep them safe. So this all kind of starts around January and February of 1944. So she went on to tell how her and her family were at her house one afternoon and a German Nazi doctor came upon her door said,
00:03:33
Speaker
he went on to introduce himself and he said, you know, I'm a a medical propagandist from the party. And he told her that the only reason he was there at the time was to a drop off pamphlets, but also b because he wanted to talk about the good old days of Berlin during the Weimar Republic and kind of talk about Germany and how it was.
00:03:59
Speaker
Now, Dr. Pearl herself admits that she was very skeptical. of all of this and kind of of him but even with that being said she still let him in to her house because she felt like she couldn't condemn and condemnation for the crimes of the sons even if they were in the majority so she was still kind of giving in hope that maybe he wasn't a part of this bigger Nazi party. So during this whole conversation, they're reminiscing about the old Germany, how it was, about the music that was once banned, about the poetry that was once banned. And what kind of makes this all come into a crashing halt is that she goes on to say that five months later, she would meet that very same doctor in Auschwitz. And all that charisma, everything was gone. He looked at her like she was nothing.
00:04:48
Speaker
The warm smiles and the candor he once showed with her. disappeared and he treated her like she was nothing so this kind of really dives in and kind of just really just sets the tone of the drastic change that she would go on to experience so she tells about how in you know that period of 1944 she and her family so she her husband her mother her father and her sons and she did have a daughter how They would once, all at once, become stripped of their homes, ripped out of their homes, and then put into the Jewish ghetto at
Deportation to Auschwitz
00:05:22
Speaker
the time. Now, she says the ghetto only served as one purpose. It was to make easier the persecutors to rob us of our last meager possessions.
00:05:31
Speaker
She said they came morning and night searching their clothes, their rooms, and that nothing was off limits for the search, saying that she had to watch woman after woman be seized and have their bodies stripped and searched for any sort of jewels, any sort of goods they had, and kind of starting to lose that process of human dignity that comes when you're being stripped, searched, and removed of all your goods. She also says she did get a bit of hope in this period because the head of the gazpacho went up to her and knew of her practice, knew of her past as doctor, and told her, you're in charge of creating a hospital. So she would run to all her neighbors asking for beds, for sheets, for towels,
00:06:15
Speaker
anything that they might use to create a makeshift hospital. And she goes on to tell this and she's saying that, you know, within the first few days, the whole, her whole apartment, this, the tone shift, and she was actually able to deliver a healthy baby.
00:06:35
Speaker
into the ghetto. But that joy was short-lived because literally the next day, her and everyone else in the ghetto in Saget would be taken and put on a cattle car and shipped off.
00:06:49
Speaker
At this point to the unknown, they didn't know where they were going. She said they traveled day and night with an unknown goal, but that the SS, she called them stormtroopers, you know, they took over the train.
00:07:01
Speaker
They didn't provide them with any food, any water. She said the small children cried with hunger and cold, and the people moaned for help. Some went insane. Others gave life to their babies there on the dirty floor, and some died, and their bodies had to travel with. She said that no one who came out of the German extermination camp can ever forget the picture that greeted them at oshewitz she describes that it as big black clouds the smoke of the crematory hung over the camp sharp red tongues of flames licked the sky and the air was full of nauseating smells of burning flesh and it is at this point that as soon as i got off the trains that
00:07:41
Speaker
the ss men with guns and whips and clubs with their hands would go on and start separating the women from the men and the children from the mothers and the young from the old she said those who resisted or were too weak to move fast were beaten kicked and dragged away she says the pain the sorrow and the loneliness that turned these women into screaming, panicky, and hysterical creatures.
00:08:04
Speaker
They had refused to enter the building, which had the disinfection sign painted on top of it. So we know these women were safe, as they weren't sent to the showers, as so many were.
00:08:15
Speaker
But because the women were in panic, they didn't want to enter because they didn't know what to await them. And this is kind of where we dive into kind of the first instance of Dr. Pearl stepping up as a doctor. An SS officer yelled out, is anyone a doctor?
00:08:31
Speaker
And she stepped forward and he told her that she had to tell the woman. to enter into the disinfectant chambers. So she called out, listen to me, do you not be afraid. that This is only the disinfection center. Nothing will happen to you here. Afterwards, we'll be put to work.
00:08:47
Speaker
We'll all remain together, friends, sisters, and common fate. I am your doctor. I'll stay with you always to take care of you, to protect you. And that is just the tone she carries throughout all of this. And then she describes the beauty parlor that they were to enter.
00:09:03
Speaker
She says it wasn't the beauty parlor that we think it is, the one that you go into to become beautiful, to already emphasize the individuality that you have.
00:09:14
Speaker
These beauty po parlors, as she calls them, the disinfecting chambers, were to strip all the women of all individuality they had its purpose was to deprive its unwilling clients of even their last remnants of beauty freshness to human appearance it was one of the typical nazi jokes a creation of their devilish imagination in which served to humiliate their victims and make them short of their remaining lifespan she says She says that when they first entered the rooms, they were still human. They were still women, wearing their own clothes, their own shoes, own underwear, and carrying bundles of stuff they still had from home, and most importantly, their identity. And then in a few short minutes,
00:09:56
Speaker
Modesty, she says, which had been drilled into them of generations past became became a thing of the past. That many women, young and old, ugly, beautiful, undernourished and well-fed, stood defenseless, naked, in a row, exposing their bodies to curious, hungry eyes of the perverted, depraved thugs who were the SS and represented Germany at the time. She goes on to say that the clothes that they were given, everything was filthy, full of lice, and none of it fitted them.
00:10:25
Speaker
as the clothing given was purposely too big or too small. If they were lucky, they were given shoes. A lot of them weren't and were given these wooden clogs, which broke the skin and caused severe infections. and If they were given shoes, if they were one of the lucky ones, the shoes almost never matched. They were either shoes of a different pair, essentially. So you had some that were, one shoe would be bigger than the other, one shoe would be smaller than the other, it'd be different types of leather. So you can just kind of imagine the uncomfortableness that they had to
00:10:57
Speaker
get used to very fast. And she says what just juxtaposes all of this and what upsets her is at the time the warehouses of Auschwitz were full of the best, most expensive clothes. They had clothes and shoes of the victims. They very well could have kept their own
Life and Struggle in Auschwitz
00:11:16
Speaker
goods, but to strip them of their identity, the Nazi party did the opposite.
00:11:20
Speaker
They made them less than. She says there is no water except for the rain which swept the cold and hard over the flatness of their camp. The only animals they ever saw were crows, rats, and lice.
00:11:33
Speaker
There were a few quote-unquote washrooms, using that very liberally, um that were scattered throughout the camp. In each of those washrooms, they only had one faucet, and over that faucet was a sign that said, polluted water, do not drink.
00:11:49
Speaker
But she said they didn't care, that they drank from it all the same, as they had to cool the burning tongues and stomachs that she said were constantly on fire from hunger. And this hunger was only made worse from the soup and the food that was given to them, as some of the soup had salt pepper in it that would literally erode their insides and make their th their thirst even worse.
00:12:10
Speaker
And they did have latrine and... these kind of washrooms, if you will. But there was only one latrine for 30 to 32,000 women, and they were only permitted to use at certain hours of the day. And latrine is not even an an accurate name for it because it was literally a ditch that had wooden planks over it. and walls around it. And she said they would have to constantly stand in knee-deep in these tiny building and human extraments. She says one of the things they all suffered from was dysentery, that they could rarely wait their turn to use the latrines.
00:12:49
Speaker
So they squatted on the planks like birds perched on a telegraph wire so close that they couldn't help but soiling one another. And she said they had to go without even We don't think of it, but she points it out of like they no longer had toilet paper to use. There was nothing to wipe themselves or clean themselves off with.
00:13:08
Speaker
She says that the only way they would even have the chance is if someone stole it. And so then they got into the habit of tearing tiny squares of their uniforms off to use. She says they would wipe their tears away with it and then use it on themselves.
00:13:23
Speaker
But this then proved a problem because once they tore an up of their prisoner's garb, essentially, it would become evident to the guards. And one of the guards actually found out about it. And they decided to hold an inspection.
00:13:40
Speaker
And one of the SS men, she says, walk through their line whipping their naked bodies and selecting at random those to die and the crematorium for the punishment of having damaged camp property. The average day, she describes, is they would wake up for roll call. This roll call was standing in rows of five for four, five six hours at a time.
00:14:02
Speaker
in any kind of weather all year round. If they were going to faint with exhaustion, they're the Nazis, the guards, arrived ready to feast upon the torture. The numbers of the roll call had to always be complete.
00:14:17
Speaker
If anyone not appears, she says, they were tracked down and thrown into the flames of the crematorium alive. And then she goes on to say that even in this roll call, there was its own specialty kind of roll call.
00:14:30
Speaker
what was labeled as the selection. And the selection was handed out by those guards who, the guards and the doctor, he would walk through the roll call and select those he deemed ill or weak, whose face he did not like, or who would simply fell into the radius of his eyes, fell into his eye contact.
00:14:51
Speaker
She says sometimes two or three hundred people at a time were pulled out of the lines, some screaming and fighting, some resisting, only to be met, she said, with the only kind of freedom that existed for them, which was death. After this roll call, they were permitted to go back to their bunks. And once again, bunks is overdoing what they were.
00:15:11
Speaker
She goes on to later describe them as cages, which I think is a lot more accurate. And this is where they would have dinner. And then after dinner, they would have a few hours to themselves.
00:15:23
Speaker
This short time, she says, developed into an art. It filled their thoughts and days as we planned every minute of it. And then she says, most likely after, she says that after the roll call, what they would usually all do is run to the faucet to try to get some drink of water to either rub themselves down with or to just even get a drink to try and thirst themselves. As far as food goes, they had very few options, if any. They were often given a turnip soup, like I said, that was often made with salt pepper, which is a chemical that's very not good for human digestion.
00:16:05
Speaker
And then... That was their dinner, and then their slice that they would have as their kind of breakfast lunch was, she describes, 200 grams of bread that was baked at the lowest grade and was often mixed with sawdust.
00:16:21
Speaker
They would be given a dab of margarine and then a spoonful of smelly marmalade or a slice of putrid sausage. And kind of what acted as a turning point for Pearl and kind of what made her in a sad way figure out her purpose for the camp would all kind of cultivate around the time around when she was given and came into her first pair shoes.
00:16:49
Speaker
Now these were men's shoes, they were size 10, so they she says they were way too big for her and they didn't have shoelaces. So she found that she actually could not even walk in them. But she had heard a rumor that one of the men in the other camps had a string that he would carry around with.
00:17:05
Speaker
She says that thought of that string filled her dreams in every minute of her waking hours. She wanted it so bad. So when she's heard of that man, she went and chased him down and she had had offered him a piece of her ration of bread. She had stored it up.
00:17:20
Speaker
I think it was for a few days to make it worthwhile trade. She says, he looked me over from head to foot carefully then grabbed me my the shoulder and hissed in my ear i don't want your bread you can keep your bread i will give you a piece of string but first i want you you she says for a second she didn't understand what she meant and she asked him again for the piece of string as the shoes were useless without the string and it might save your life He didn't listen and he said, hurry up, hurry up.
00:17:50
Speaker
He said hoarsely. With his hands filthy with human extramit, he then reached out for her womanhood, so her vagina, and he rudely insisted what he wanted. Essentially, he was saying, if you want this string, you're going to have to earn it through sex. and She says as soon as she realized that she was running away from the man saying, i wouldn't let it happen to me.
00:18:14
Speaker
She would come out of the apathy that she had enveloped for the last two months in camp and show the Nazis and show her fellow prisoners that we can keep the human dignity in face of every humiliation, every torture. And that is when she started her mission of bringing humanity back to her bunk.
00:18:33
Speaker
of reminding all of her fellow prisoners of that they were people, that even though they were imprisoned, that the Nazis weren't going to strip them of their dignity, of their identity. So she started to put a plan into effect of instead of going to sleep at usual, she then at night would start telling stories of her past,
00:18:57
Speaker
stories of her life and to get of her work of her husband of her sons the books they read and the music and this just of talking about hope and of life brought a renewed energy back into these women and she said that their souls and their minds were just as hungry for conversation and compassion and after One night after the next, and they all started to open their hearts.
00:19:23
Speaker
And then their nights were spent in conversation. and then as soon as they started to know each other better, they started playing games to just keep their mind engaged.
00:19:34
Speaker
She describes one of these games as am a lady. So essentially what it would go is, I am a lady. It's a beautiful, sunny morning, and I feel too lazy to go to work.
00:19:47
Speaker
What am I going to do today? Am I going to go shopping? Am I going to go get my hair done? Am going to take a walk around the park and kind of just hope of the future and also the past, which allowed them to keep just a shining bit of their dignity of their home and of their pride.
00:20:09
Speaker
But while all this was going on, they were still having to deal with the very brutal outside influences of the camp itself. One of those horrible influences, and I may do a whole episode over her just because of how horrible a human being she was. Her name was Irma Grease and Dr. Pearl describes her as being one of the most beautiful women that she's ever seen.
00:20:33
Speaker
That her body was in perfect line, her face clear and angelic, and her blue eyes the most innocent ones that you could ever imagine. But behind those eyes was actually one of the highest ranking SS women in Auschwitz. And she was the most depraved, the cruelest and imaginative sexual pervert that Dr. Pearl had ever come across during her time dealing with all of this. And kind of an example that she gives that just really showcases this is...
00:21:05
Speaker
One of the things that the Nazi guards, the SS, would love to do to the women, it didn't matter if the women had big boobs or small boobs or any any size of boobs, is the men would love to inflict pain by whipping them, by cutting them, hurting them.
00:21:27
Speaker
And because they were cutting across flesh that was in these horrible circumstances in the camp, they would become infected. The tissue would become infected.
00:21:38
Speaker
So these women would then go to Dr. Pearl and her infirmary and try to get help for it. Irma happened to visit the hospital when she was performing an operation on one of these infected breasts.
00:21:53
Speaker
Dr. Pearl had no instruments whatsoever. She was doing this all by hand um and with a dull knife that she had to constantly sharpen on stone. And she was saying that the patient was screaming through pain and all of this.
00:22:05
Speaker
Irma saw this, put down her whip, the whip that she had purposely made to be inlaid with beads to inflict more pain. and carefully, interestingly, watch Dr. Pearl perform the surgery on this woman. And Dr. Pearl, while doing this, is realizing that Irma is getting off on this, that she's getting off on this pain and she's delighting in it.
00:22:29
Speaker
And then from that day on, Irma would go around camp and pick out the most beautiful women and then slashed their breasts open with the whip just so they could get infected.
00:22:43
Speaker
and would be taken to the infirmary to have this surgery and undergone undergone, just so she could watch it and delight in it and get off on it. And then one day as Dr. Pearl is in camp and in her infirmary, she gets called upon by Irma. And she says, i want you to operate on me because i believe I am pregnant. And being a pregnant SS officer, Dr. Pearl speculates that Irma didn't want to lose her figure.
00:23:12
Speaker
And then B didn't want to deal with the pregnancy. So she orders Pearl to give her and an abortion. Dr. Pearl was scared this whole time. She was forced at gunpoint to do this operation.
Social Dynamics and Survival Strategies
00:23:26
Speaker
And she was constantly fearing for her life because she knew that the punishment for touching a guard is punishable by death. But at the same time, she has this officer, the Irma, pointing a gun at her and telling her to operate or she will kill her.
00:23:40
Speaker
So she's kind of, and what is historians call this choiceless choice. they don't They don't have no option. So she had to perform the surgery. And afterwards, she says that Irma grazed up from the bench and arranged her clothes and looked at her and says, you are a good doctor. What a pity that you have to die.
00:24:00
Speaker
Germany needs good doctors. And then she promised, Irma promised Dr. Pearl Cope, but she never gave. But this was kind of just the start. Now, flashing back and going back to the latrines and the pivotal part they played in the camp itself. So the latrines, they were without water. They were essentially just a big shed, like I said, with holes in the ground and wooden planks over it. Now, she says that they were also one of the most important places in Camp C where she was stationed, as it was the community hall, the center of their social activities in the newsroom.
00:24:36
Speaker
She also states that it was also the black market, the commodity exchange building. There you could buy bread for your sausage, margarine for your bread, exchange food, shoes, and a piece of clothes for sex. And it was also there that they made plans for the future. And she says that if it hadn't been for latrines and what they provided, she would probably had gone crazy in the montanami of the camp life.
00:25:02
Speaker
What also stands out and kind of shocked me as I read this, but it also makes sense, is that the latrines also served as a love nest. It was there that male and female prisoners, they could meet for a fugitive moment of joyless sexual intercourse in which the body was used as a commodity to pay for things that they needed. And she says that there were a detachment of male workers that came into Camp C. Camp C was predominantly a female only camp.
00:25:32
Speaker
But these male workers would come in to either clean the latrines, build streets or patch up leaky roofs. These men, she says, were trusted old prisoners who knew everything there was to know about the camp and had connections and were masters of organizing. And these were men that also kind of made them the Don Johns, if you will.
00:25:53
Speaker
They would choose the woman among the youngest and the prettiest and the least emancipated to secure their goods in exchange for sex. Gisela says that at first she was shocked and kind of revolted by this idea. And she says that her pride and her integrity as a woman kind of revolted if against that very idea.
00:26:12
Speaker
And she would constantly beg the women to stop, especially when she had the first case of venereal disease pop up because of this. And she at one point threatened to refuse treatment, but then she noticed something. She says, but later when I saw that a piece of bread thus earned saved lives, that when she met a young girl who a pair of shoes earned after a week of prostitution was saved from being thrown in the crematory, she began to understand and she began to forget as she saw that these were women doing what they had to do to survive, to last another day. And that's when she finally understood the practice. The next thing that kind of sets...
00:26:54
Speaker
her off on her journey as a doctor is, weirdly enough, margarine, which is like butter, but it's more made of oils. At least from my understanding, it could be so wrong. She says that she had to stand by and watch helplessly as these women lost their health, lost their lives. And she was there was nothing that she as a doctor could do. that She didn't have drugs. She didn't have medicine or salves or bandages or medical instruments.
00:27:22
Speaker
And then one day, she kind of got inspired because she knows that they were all struggling with these like skin diseases from infections, from cuts, from bites.
00:27:34
Speaker
She kind of had the idea that, you know, we need to use the margarine. The margarine that we're provided with our rations, if we save that and we use it as a salve, it will help our skin start to heal. And she says by some miracles, maybe psychological rather than physiological, the sores that these women were experiencing started to heal, that there were no new eruptions that occurred. And then margarine then became the highest piece of article in Auschwitz, that it was more expensive than bread, clothing, or shoes.
00:28:04
Speaker
Margarine. That she says even after she was assigned to work in the hospital that she still used Margarine and the Miracle Solve. And that is kind of like what kept her her alive. Now, like I said, she does eventually get selected to become a doctor.
00:28:23
Speaker
of this this whole block that she is overseeing. And it was her with five others. There was five other doctors who were women and four nurses.
00:28:33
Speaker
But she says they were doctors in the sense of a ghastly Nazi joke. That the cages along the walls that were held were filled with cases of typhoid, malaria, scarlet fever, pneumonia, and contagious skin disease. So she says that these women, essentially when they got appointed, the nine of them made a solemn pact and swore to defeat the Nazis and their intent of degrading us, debasing us, and breaking our spirit.
00:29:01
Speaker
That these women that she was with were real humans and they all had a clear picture of what was going on and they saw things as a whole. And they kind of chose to take themselves out of the picture, take their personal needs out of the picture and instead focus it on the goal of helping others.
00:29:20
Speaker
And that is solely really what kept them alive, that they were treating the patients with the meager supplies they did have.
Medical Challenges and Resistance
00:29:29
Speaker
It was like paper bandages, very cruel medical instruments.
00:29:34
Speaker
But what they were really offering was their voices. and their comfort and kind of the courage by listening to the humans that they treated and just treating them once again as humans. She goes on, and I'm going to mention this because she puts the people back in the equation when it comes to the story of the Holocaust.
00:29:55
Speaker
She goes on to say that Dr. Rose was not only a pediatrician, but she was a child herself, and that the optimism that she had shone like a sun in her eyes. You know, Rose's goodness was more contagious, that she was a militant idealist, and that her every action bore proof to her beliefs.
00:30:14
Speaker
Then there was Dr. Charlotte, who was a symbol of motherly love. And then there were the nurses, Magda, Mina, Lenora, and Suzanne, who even though that they did the dirty work and to the hospital, they were always smiling, always willing to endure every hardship with such nobility and uprightness that I don't even know how they began to do that.
00:30:36
Speaker
um knowing that the horrors that they faced. So when they were in this hospital, they would put their heads together and recite songs of freedom that they did not break and that they could not break as they knew that 32,000 helpless women needed them. that And she goes on to say herself that she knows that this infirmary, this hospital, was more of itself if they went there, that instead of being cured of one disease, that patients often caught other diseases that were rapid in camp, that they were given no medicine, paper bandages, and no instruments, that the fever-ridden patients, if they were there, shivered on the bare planks without blanket.
00:31:18
Speaker
And what's really fucked up, and all this is really fucked up, but essentially she says she knew that there were large metal boxes full of the most expensive medical instruments and indescribable cool riches of drugs that could have saved their life if they were allowed to have them. And Dr. Pearl goes on to say that she herself, like many other Jewish doctors, that they were told to bring their instruments, um their tools along with them as they would be permitted to practice their profession.
00:31:49
Speaker
and So, Dr. Pearl, when she was in the ghetto and then when she came Auschwitz, that was her bag of possessions, was her tools. And they were her best instruments and she brought the most expensive drugs, all taken away from her as soon as she enters the gate of Auschwitz.
00:32:04
Speaker
And to kind of just paint this picture even more, that in the corner of this infirmary, there was a corner with a low wooden table on it and that was their operating table. that that is a place where they would bandage broken heads, limbs, open up, venereal disease, sores.
00:32:22
Speaker
They took blood tests and they pulled an infected teeth. And the operations were all performed with a few pairs of rusty little scissors and a knife that she had to ha sharpen on a stone.
00:32:34
Speaker
And they had no aesthetics. Now, we can't talk about Auschwitz. and talk about Pearl's journey without mentioning the involvement of Dr. Mengele. And if Pearl was described as being the Angel of Auschwitz, Dr. Mengele was, and it still has the nickname of being the Angel of Death of Auschwitz.
00:32:56
Speaker
He was a very perverted man who performed horrible experiments on the prisoners of Auschwitz. And he was very interested in the women infirmary and more specifically pregnant women.
00:33:08
Speaker
And that kind of is what brings us to kind of the crux of this story and really just how Pearl would go on to shape and impact the women of this camp. So Dr. Mengele, he would visit the hospital every day and that the staff was beaten cruelly in front of patients. Gisela said that the hospital, while some of the sick left the hospital cured, the main thing that the hospital did provide for her was the ability to hide pregnant women until they could interrupt their pregnancy and send them back to work. And one of the reasons she also tried to keep as many people out of the hospital as possible is that Dr. Mengele and his henchmen would often storm into the hospital, see how many patients were there,
00:33:55
Speaker
And then demands that all of the patients be taken to the crematorium because they were unfit. So what i'm going to get into next is really how Dr. Pearl would earn, in part, earn the name of the angel of Auschwitz.
00:34:11
Speaker
And she essentially had to make, once again, that choiceless choice. And i have no fault of her. I understand where she's coming from. you don't want to hear any slander on this woman and what she did and the services that she provided to these women. So she says that a few days after the arrival to camp, that one of the SS chiefs would address the woman, encouraging the pregnant ones to step forward because they would be taken to another camp where the living conditions were going to be better. They would provide them with double bread rations. And so these women could be strong and healthy when the time of the birth came. However, Dr. Pearl would find out this was all lie.
00:34:51
Speaker
As one day she happened to have an errand near the crematoriums and she saw with her own eyes what was done to these women. They would be surrounded by a group of the SS men and women who took pleasure by giving these pregnant women a taste of hell.
00:35:09
Speaker
These women would be beaten with clubs and whips. They would be torn by dogs and then dragged around the hair and kicked in the stomach with heavy German boots. And then when these women collapsed, they would be thrown into the crematorium.
00:35:23
Speaker
ah alive and this is the point where dr pearl realized why she had been kept alive and what her purpose in this camp would to be because remember she was a doctor of gynecology she knew all about pregnancies how to deliver the babies and also how to get rid of pregnancies and she says that the horror turned into revolt and that revolt shook me and gave her a new incentive to live and that she knew as long as she remained alive that it was her to save all of the pregnant women in camp see that it was up to her to save the life of mothers if there was no other way than by destroying the life of the unborn child so she ran to camp and she told everyone of what she had witnessed And she said never again was anyone to betray their condition, let any of the guards know about their pregnancy, that it was to be denied at their last breath.
00:36:23
Speaker
And when I was telling actually my dad about the story of this podcast, he asked a question that I'm sure a lot of you are wondering is, how are these women pregnant?
00:36:34
Speaker
And, you know, why were they having sex? And there's two parts in that. Dr. Pearl goes that a lot of the women who arrived there, they arrived pregnant.
00:36:45
Speaker
And then a lot of the other women, they were either raped by the guards or they were engaging in sex to receive goods. And sex makes a baby. And that's how these women found themselves, whether they entered the camp pregnant or they became pregnant during their time.
00:37:01
Speaker
But it didn't matter. And so all of these procedures that Dr. Pearl would give these women, they will all be done on dark nights when everyone else's was sleeping, in the dark corners of the camp, in the toilet on the floor, without a drop of water, that she delivered their babies. And she goes on to say how she accelerated their birth by rupturing the membranes and how usually because of that, the spontaneous birth would happen soon after, either a day or two. However, she produced dilation with her fingers and she inverted the embryo and caused it to be born.
00:37:37
Speaker
In the dark, it was always hurried in the midst of filth and dearth. And after the child had been delivered, she had to quickly bandage the mother's abdomen and send her back to work. Or if possible, she would place her in the hospital, which is really just a grim joke. And she would label them the diagnosis of pneumonia, which was a safe diagnosis. And she knew it was one that would not send her to the crematory.
00:38:02
Speaker
She said she delivered... woman pregnant in the eighth seventh sixth and fifth month always in a hurry always with her five fingers in the dark under terrible conditions she goes on to say that no one will ever know to her what it meant to destroy these babies as she viewed children as a gift from god and she still after years in medical practice she still says childbirth was still one of the greatest miracles of nature and how she loved those newborn babies, not as a doctor, but as a mother. And she said she had to do it to save the lives of these women. That every time that she was kneeling down in the mud and the dirt and the human extraments, she would pray to God to help save the mother.
00:38:50
Speaker
she would never touch a pregnant woman again. And every time she says God was good to her and a miracle happened. She goes on in the book to say that one of the reasons she did this too is she knew that if she kept these women alive through ending their pregnancies,
00:39:07
Speaker
the mothers would have a chance at life of getting through Auschwitz, making it through it. And once again, when all these horrors were over, have the chance to have another baby.
00:39:18
Speaker
And thus by keeping the Jewish population alive, that by making this horrible choiceless choice, that she was saving these women. And she goes on how even how they had this practice in place that one day again, she was lulled into a false sense of security. So she, Dr. Mengele came into the hospital and he gave a new order.
00:39:41
Speaker
He said that from now on Jewish women could have their children and that they were not going to be killed because of their pregnancy. He said that the children, of course, would have to be taken to the crematorium, but the mother would be allowed to live. And Pearl and her team, upon hearing this, thought that the fate and the tides had finally shifted, but they were lied to because she had 292 expectant mothers ward.
00:40:07
Speaker
when dr manglet changed his mind that he came roaring into the hospital with his whip and revolver and had every single one of those two hundred and ninety-two women loaded into a single truck and tossed alive into the flames And then this went on.
00:40:24
Speaker
The women went back into hiding. But then there was another order given. Once again, that pregnancy was no longer punishable by death, but it had to be interrupted. So Dr. Mengele said, so you can be pregnant, but if you want to stay alive, you now have to have the pregnancy terminated. And the reason that Dr. Mengele wanted to do this, and this just shows his perverseness, is because he wanted to study the embryo of the fetuses. But while even this is dark, Dr. Pearl saw a light in this because now she could finally take these women and begin treating them in the hospital.
00:41:03
Speaker
So not treating them in the dark and on the floor, but in the infirmary itself, which were slightly better conditions than the filthy floors of the dark barracks. And... This kind of marks, and that announcement kind of marks the beginning of the end of Pearl's story in Auschwitz.
Transfer and Liberation
00:41:21
Speaker
She goes on to state that every six months, a large number of prisoners would leave the camp in the preparation of the liquidation of various camps. So no camp was permitted to function larger than six months with the same set of prisoners.
00:41:37
Speaker
So every six months, essentially, the camp was emptied. People were killed to make room for new prisoners coming in. She says there was 32,000 Hungarian Jews from women in Camp C when their term came.
00:41:49
Speaker
The process lasted for four weeks. And at the end of those four weeks, 20,000 had been cremated. And 12,000 had been sent for work. And one thing that stands out is she says that she could never forget thousands of women who would rush around madly around camp trying to find loose brick, loose red brick that they could use to dye and stain their cheeks so they looked healthier, so they wouldn't be killed. So later on, she says that she was working in a Block 19, that was a barrack that was housing expectant mothers, along with other women who were experiencing tuberculosis, heart disease, or frostbite. Essentially, the incurables or the condemned.
00:42:30
Speaker
And that is kind of where she found herself towards the end, still surrounded by the group of doctors in the first place that she had surrounded herself with in the beginning. She goes on to say that Anne, another physician, had taken a different route when it came to trying to survive, that she had tried to survive by simply ignoring everything that went around her. She closed her eyes, her ears, and her mind to the horror surrounding her. That Anne worked from morning till night, unrelenting, pretending that the world beyond the radius of her hands, so essentially of that hospital room, did not exist.
00:43:05
Speaker
But this facade all ended when Anne... came upon the crematorium and she was given a piece of soap. Pearl states that this piece of soap was essentially made from the bodies of our parents and our children because a key ingredient in soap back then was ash.
00:43:25
Speaker
Before this, it was typically just simply the leftovers of a fire but a thing that Auschwitz had plenty of was the ash that came out of the crematoriums and it is this soap that pearl says that made anne collapse and she stopped working She stopped eating, she stopped drinking, and she stopped sleeping, but she sat with her eyes open and motionless.
00:43:50
Speaker
She goes on to then mention Rose again, and Rose was the optimistic pediatrician, and how Rose had worked alongside her from the first day of her arrival in Auschwitz. And her weapon, kind of like Dr. Pearl,
00:44:05
Speaker
Her weapon against all of this was optimism and optimism in the face of hardness that Rose had made up her mind that whatever the jailers did to us, they were powerless to destroy the optimism and faith and wisdom. And for eight months, this worked.
00:44:21
Speaker
Rose was strong enough to keep up the pretense and fight every torture with faith. But then Rose collapsed as her wrists and ankles swell and her heart began to give out. And she was dying before Dr. Pearl's eyes and there was nothing Pearl could do to save her. And then it came January and rumors started spreading through the camp like wildfire that Auschwitz was going to be evacuated.
00:44:49
Speaker
that the crematories were closing down because the Nazis were trying to hide evidence of their bestiality. But Dr. Mengele sent for Dr. Pearl. And he said, get ready, you're leaving Auschwitz.
00:45:01
Speaker
And suddenly she was before German officers who she had never seen before. And this German officer spoke to the guards and then looked at Gisela, handed her a piece of paper and said, you know too much.
00:45:15
Speaker
You're going away from here. And don't try to run away. Don't do anything foolish. And he slapped her across the face and said, this is ah an advance of what you're going to get. And then blinded by tears, she walked out of the gates of Auschwitz and to which she was taken to Hamburg.
00:45:31
Speaker
From Hamburg, she returned to the hospital and she began to work. And she does say that the camp at Hamburg was different because it was a working camp. And this camp was heaven compared to Auschwitz because while it was a prison and it was hard and merciless, but the goal was work and not extermination. That in this hospital, she had some drugs and instruments and bandages to the patients.
00:45:56
Speaker
And while the food was as bad as it was in Auschwitz, there was more of it. So she had a sense of relative peace during this time because she was able to eat more because she was able to sustain and help more patients, because she had more supplies.
00:46:14
Speaker
But she says this piece was short-lived, because a few weeks after, sometime in February 1945, raid sirens started. air raid sirens started And then from that day on, that sirens would go off day and night and that the bombs would fall constantly. And she knew that with every air raid, it was kind of a sense of like hope, but scared hope. Because they knew that with every air raid and bomb that was dropped, the Allies were one step closer to getting them out of this camp.
00:46:45
Speaker
The thing is they had to survive the bombings. So she says all day long, she sewed, bandaged, poke broken limbs and plaster and gave a few moments of respite from the pain to the dying.
00:46:56
Speaker
And her ears were filled with the shrieking of sirens and the moans of bond victims. And she says that what got her through it is working. and knowing that she was doing her professional duty and that helped her to forget her own grief.
00:47:10
Speaker
However, this piece, if you can call it that, was again short-lived because all the Jewish people in camp would be surrounded up and then they would be taken to Belsenburgum. She describes the SS saying themselves was a designated dung heap and that in Belsenburgum there was no sign of the famous German gift for organization.
00:47:32
Speaker
Here, the masses lay dying because of the consequence of lack of planning, in that essentially Belsenburgen became a dumping ground for the prisoners, evicted from all other camps. In the highways surrounding it were crowded with the endless columns of marching slaves, almost naked in the icy winter, stick-and-starving human skeletons.
00:47:52
Speaker
Those who were too weak to keep up were branded with gun butts and that dead bodies littered the ditches on both sides of the highway. And this is kind of just setting the scene for the horror that this camp is. And she says it was better to have walked into the camp because those who arrived in cattle cars often faced violence.
00:48:12
Speaker
a worse fate as she would pass many and she would so see the hands creeping out through the barred windows and how often the cars were put off on a side rail and were forgotten until they were either destroyed by the bombings or just left there until the stench of the decomposing bodies reminded the Nazis of their existence. She says that Belzenberg can never be described because every language lacks the suitable words to depict its horrors. It cannot be imagined because every, even the most pathological minds, balk at such a picture. She says while in Auschwitz, she believed that that was the worst that humanity could do, that that was essentially the place that made Dante's Inferno a appear a musical comedy, and that was hell.
00:49:06
Speaker
But when she arrived in Belsenburgum, she discovered that Auschwitz was a purgatory. And that hell was enclosed and between the barbed wire of Belsenburgo. Because the camp itself only had a few blocks of cages around the walls.
00:49:25
Speaker
So, in other words, people were lying on the ground in their own filth. The living, the dying, and the dead together. How here, there were no crematoriums to burn the bodies.
00:49:37
Speaker
that they were all left where they had died unless someone who had the strength to move them out and throw them in a dung heap but many did not have the strength to do such she says everyone had typhus everyone was covered in lice eaten alive by rats there was no food no water and no medicine She says the diarrhea caused by the typhus had become uncontrollable, that it had flooded the bottom of the cages, dipped through the cracks into the faces of the women lying in the cages below, and that this mixed with blood, pus, and urine, and essentially formed a slimy, fuded mud on the floor. Essentially that without water, without medicine, and essentially like everything seemed futile.
00:50:22
Speaker
But Dr. Pearl says the doctor and her never gave up even when human beings reached the limits of their endurance. And she says at this camp that some even resorted to cannibalism. How they resorted to the bodies of the recently dead and ate their livers, their hearts, and their brains.
00:50:40
Speaker
And at this camp, unlike all the other camps, there was no room call, no selection, work, nor no order. Because the Germans knew that anyone when in this camp, they were going to die. So what's the point?
00:50:53
Speaker
When she arrived there on March 7th, this is when she found out that her brother... and her 20-year-old sister-in-law were among the dead. And this rector, how it was not until the day of liberation, that was April 15th, that she saw in the eyes of the British officers that they were weeping uncontrollably at the sight that unfolded before them, that even the most hardened warriors were crying, vomiting, and cursing at this never imagined death of human depravity.
00:51:28
Speaker
And what's worse is that once these British officers were there, they were able to go into the warehouses. And that is where they found them brim with food, medicine, serums, bandages that could have saved countless lives of the entire camp had they only been permitted to use them. Another sick and cruel and twisted joke. Now, during this liberation, Gisela would herself find an angel and the name of a priest named Abbe Brandt.
00:52:00
Speaker
He was French and he was a member of the Vatican mission. And when he met her and the other doctors who were working there, He said, if there's anything I can do for you, help you in your work, help you in the ease of your patience, please accept my helping hand.
00:52:17
Speaker
And he would show this time and again. Dr. Pearl told him that I have no sugar, no milk, no rice to feed those wasted bodies. They need more nourishment, more wholesome food. Abbe listened to her. He never interrupted her. And...
00:52:33
Speaker
The next day, a truck stopped before the hospital and the truck was filmed with all the things they needed, with sugar milk, rice and chocolate in large quantities. And she says that Abby kind of started to know their thoughts and their dreams.
00:52:49
Speaker
And that one morning he left the camp to visit the farms around them. And the evening he returned with vegetables, lettuce, and apples to enrich their table. And that when someone needed a dress, they asked the little priest. Shoes, paper, warm clothes.
00:53:03
Speaker
He never said it was impossible and nothing seemed impossible for him. And then just to show the humanity of this man and the compassion that he had, he one day asked the nurses to come into the office.
00:53:18
Speaker
And there he handed them each a little parcel. And he goes, i brought this from you from from France. I hope you like it. He says, I don't understand about these things. I am a priest, but I wanted you to be women again, not only workers. And I want you to enjoy your
Post-War Recovery and Legacy
00:53:36
Speaker
youth.
00:53:36
Speaker
And in the parcels, there were face powder, a piece of soap, and little perfume. And Dr. Pearl goes, there was a message from Paris, from him, from the world that he wanted us to forget. And just for a moment to forget and remember who they were as women, who they were before all of this.
00:53:57
Speaker
Another thing that both Abe and Dr. Pearl had to once again start dealing with was kind of sex and the prostitution of sex. How she says that love was cheap there.
00:54:10
Speaker
That the liberated thousands completely demoralized by the long years of oppression had no other aim to satisfy their most basic instincts, hunger, and sexual desires.
00:54:20
Speaker
Some sought sex because it made them feel like humans again. Others because they wanted to prove them to themselves that they were still men and women. Others because they wanted to enjoy their newfound freedom.
00:54:34
Speaker
And then there were those who sold their bodies again for cigarettes, for chocolate, and other small comforts. And Abe himself, but he watched this open prostitution. He didn't know how to stop it, and it put him into a state of despair.
00:54:49
Speaker
But he never came at it, Dr. Pearl says, at a place of judgment. He tried to come at it from a place of love and place of understanding. And that how Abe kind of set out alone when he saw these couples, you know, locked in their embrace.
00:55:03
Speaker
Sometimes the man wore the uniform of a British officer. Sometimes it was the prisoner who only a few weeks ago believed his life was finished. Ali would see this these men and women, and he would begin talking to them.
00:55:15
Speaker
First, he asked them to tell their story of their lives in every detail. And she says, until the past surrounded them like a veil, shutting out the present. And then only then he spoke to them about the future and how...
00:55:26
Speaker
Abby's pockets were always full of cigarettes, chocolate, and essentially he wanted to stop this prostitution by giving generously and freely, and how he never gave up, and how the relentless work he saw could be felt around the camp, and kind of the hope that he brought with them in the sense of security and love that this man brought with him and it stuck with Giselle. Giselle says that after she left Belzenbergen she would wander from one camp to the other trying to find her husband and her son.
00:56:00
Speaker
After 19 days of searching she had learned that her husband had been beaten to death shortly before the liberation and that her son had been cremated and how when she returned back to Belzenbergen she didn't want to live.
00:56:13
Speaker
That she had ultimately succumbed to that hopelessness that had kind of been creeping with her through this whole journey through this. And she knew that she could do it as there was poison in the hospital. And she took some. And when she awoke, she saw that Abbe was there and he found her lying on the bed. And he ran to get a British physician to come and help her. And that this is ultimately what saved her life. And she goes on to say that, you know, he was my doctor, but more than that, he was my friend and he was my savior.
00:56:47
Speaker
And she understood better than ever why the sick and the dying loved him so much. Because he took her in and not only that, he, seeing her in this state, he took her to a convent and France and he told the members of the convent to take care of Gisela, that she was his dear friend, and how Abby would write her encouraging letters, and slowly, very slowly, she started to feel human again. And the last time that she saw them, he came back to Paris to visit her, and he told her that, you know, his mission at Belsenbergen was finished, and that he was going away. But before he left, he kissed her on her forehead, and he looked sadly at the concentration camp number on my arm.
00:57:31
Speaker
and he asked her to believe in love and to give love wherever I go. And that is the end of her memoir. And then from there, we know several things.
00:57:42
Speaker
So Gisela made it through this horrible experience. She, after this, would be granted a temporary visa to serve as a lecturer in the United States. This was sponsored, and she had moved into an upper-class neighborhood in New York.
00:57:55
Speaker
Her goal was always to become a doctor again. To do this, though, she had to become a citizen first. And so she was sponsored by a Representative Sol Bloom, and he petitioned the Justice Department to pass a bill that would make Pearl a permanent resident of the United States.
00:58:13
Speaker
This was actually rejected, and it wouldn't be until March 12, 1948.
00:58:20
Speaker
that President Truman signed a bill granting haven to her in the United States. One of the reasons for this, and there was a long and tiring struggle to gain her citizenship, as we can see in that whole process, and kind of to have her medical practice reinstated. And throughout this all, she was interrogated constantly by the immigration and nationalization services to pretty much make sure that she did not sympathize with the the Nazis.
00:58:48
Speaker
And so during that process, she was having to relive all of that trauma again to explain them. to to them A, was she sympathetic to Dr. Mengele? Did she participate in his experiments? Her involvement with the pregnant women and having to explain that.
00:59:03
Speaker
But luckily she was given her citizenship, and she was able to practice gynecology again. And she says that her prayer at the entrance to the delivery room every time was always, God, you owe me a life, a living baby. And in 1948, she would also go on to write this testimony, which has been pivotal.
00:59:25
Speaker
And I highly recommend you read it it She goes into so much more detail. And the reason that her testimony is so great is she humanizes her fellow inmates. she I can't cover every story that she told of everyone she came across because I would be here for three hours, but she gives life back. She takes the six million Jewish people who were lost and she tries to put a face and name to everyone.
Conclusion and Reflection
00:59:51
Speaker
She doesn't want them to be lost. She wants them to be known. and
00:59:57
Speaker
You know, she performed her own resistance by defying both the Nazis on destroying pregnant women and then with her own vow, again, to preserve the lives of women. She had to make that choiceless choice.
01:00:10
Speaker
And by performing these abortions to save the lives of women who would otherwise have been gassed, And that she knew her attitude throughout this is neither self-agonizing, nor is it like a false modest. It's a very real, and she she knew that being a doctor in Auschwitz demanded exceptional dedication and courage, and she valued the respect that she receives. But it's also clear that, you know, her being a doctor during all this, her her purpose of saving these women is also what kept her alive. And we know that it's estimated that she...
01:00:47
Speaker
ended around 3,000 pregnancies in the hopes of saving 3,000 women so that they would get another chance at life.
01:00:58
Speaker
And I think that's huge. And that's the takeaway. She made the choiceless choice to save and protect these women. to give them a chance, to give them a piece of hope. And for that, and for all the women that she encountered during her time as a doctor, it gave her the title, and a well-deserved title, of the Angel of Auschwitz.
01:01:21
Speaker
She helped keep these women alive, not only through medical practices, but through her ability to drive up hope and inspiration in these women by talking them to appealing to their human humility and reminding them who they were as individuals and why matters today matters today is one of the things that Dr. Pearl touches on is she says that today when everything seems so helpless in this chaotic world of ours, when after all the bloodshed, all the suffering of past years, peace and security are still unknown. People like me who have gone through hell often ask themselves the question, where will this end?
01:02:07
Speaker
Will goodness, love, justice never again rain on earth? will hate and evil always wield the spectre she says her questions remain unanswered but she knows that the responsibility of the world we live in lies not with man but in rather his education and that the responsibility for the world lies with the educators.
01:02:32
Speaker
And that if we wanted it, if we really and honestly attempted the chance to build a better world, the good in mankind will prevail. But we have to do that through education and educating ourselves. And that today,
01:02:46
Speaker
is more truth than anything. It's reminding ourselves that hate cannot stand. It's reminding ourselves who we are as humans and how we treat each other matters and how you have to be educated or else someone else is gonna put ideologies like Hitler did into the minds of the public.
01:03:06
Speaker
And that is how you end up with the Holocaust, with a genocide. And that is not acceptable. and that is why this story is something i wanted to do because it matters her story matters it still matters especially today so i know that was a dark and very heavy episode but i think it's very important that we can't forget the horrors that these women and men faced or else we're doomed to repeat it and other fascists will come back into society and will be doomed to repeat our mistakes
01:03:40
Speaker
So with that, that is where I'm going to leave this episode. Hope you have a good um If you like it, comment, share, please subscribe. i think it's always good to remind ourselves that we're not alone.
01:03:53
Speaker
So good night.