The Angel of Auschwitz Saved Thousands of Lives By Defying The Nazis

Before Auschwitz became a stark reality, Gisella Perl worked as a successful Jewish gynecologist in Romania where she lived with her husband and two children. When her town was invaded in 1944, she made the spontaneous decision to leave her daughter in the safe keeping of some non-Jewish neighbors just hours before the Nazis knocked on her door. Soon loaded on a train with her husband, son, and elderly parents, Perl would endure a harrowing eight-day journey towards the living hell known as Auschwitz. Upon arrival, the family was immediately separated, never to see each other again. 

But Perl was not like the other women in her barrack - she was a medical doctor and a professional who could be useful to the Nazis. Her skills were valuable in a place where disease and death were rife, and she was soon placed in the camp's medical ward where she would meet the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele. As her captor and supervisor, she was subject to his every demand, even those that involved horrific experiments on human prisoners. 

S.S. officers had an affinity for whipping the bare breasts of women at Auschwitz, and Perl was responsible for healing these wounds and performing surgery on pregnant woman in distress. The appalling medical conditions of the camp made her job painfully difficult, as there was little running water, no anesthesia, and no clean equipment. She tended to everything from diseases brought on by torture, filth, starvation, and vermin to skulls cracked open by violence.

Before Perl understood the implications of her role as Mengele's assistant, she tried to satisfy his wishes by rounding up all the pregnant women in the camp for his inspection. He told her he wanted to make sure they were being properly fed and cared for. But his true intentions became clear the day Perl delivered up 50 expecting mothers to his medical ward, only to see them herded into a Red Cross truck and driven directly to the ovens. Devastated by her lapse in judgment and riddled with guilt at the deaths of these innocent women, Perl could barely stand living another day.

Once Perl fully understood the intentions of Dr. Mengele, she made a conscious decision to work against him. She knew he was targeting pregnant women for his research - a fact that would only lead them to death - and she was determined to put a stop to his crimes. If he was hell bent on butchering the pregnant women at Auschwitz, she would have to help these innocent mothers find a way to escape their dire situation. So, she began performing secret abortions in the barracks at night - in filthy conditions - working in the dark so Mengele and the S.S. officers would not suspect anything. She knew their plight in the camps could not be permanent, and if she could just keep these pregnant women alive for a while longer, perhaps they could go on to have healthy families someday. 

Dr. Josef Mengele was not just any doctor during the Holocaust - he was a medical maniac of the highest order. Interested in the difference between identical twins and people with physical abnormalities like heterochromia iridum (eyes of two different colors), Mengele performed endless experimental surgeries on prisoners who could offer no resistance at Auschwitz. Given the circumstances of the war, he was accountable to no one and was able to validate his work using grant money from the government. His medical ward was conveniently attached to the crematorium, which heightened the ease of his experimentation and made disposal of bodies simple. Perl bore witness to these atrocities, and, even worse, she was expected to assist him whenever he requested. 

One of 30 doctors at Auschwitz, Mengele was driven by his own psychotic need to understand the physiques of different races and what made them unique. His favorite time of day was when the new prisoners landed on the train platform, and he was able to hand-pick his medical subjects out of the hundreds of unsuspecting women and children. He was, of course, never short on subjects and had a wide variety to choose from, always selecting those who he believed would best further his medical research. Once assigned to his ward, the prisoners were likely in store for a lengthy period of torture before they welcomed death with open arms. Mengele was known to perform medical dissections on conscious patients and use pregnant women and their unborn fetuses as guinea pigs in his perverse studies. When the procedures ended in death, he simply tossed the bodies in the crematorium. 

Perl's grief at the tasks she had to perform at Auschwitz was immense; she even tried to commit suicide in the years following her release. This grief was also greatly compounded by her memories of the pregnant women at Auschwitz and the many lost babies she witnessed. While most people respected her decision to help the innocent through aborting fetuses, there were still those who found her decision highly controversial.

All in all, she is estimated to have performed close to 3,000 abortions during her time at Auschwitz and, by her own admission, even induced early labor in some women who were too far gone. These babies were mostly underdeveloped and died instantly in the darkness of the barracks. In her memoir, she also tells the story of one young woman who was so close to full term, the baby was born alive. Although Perl tried to keep it safe, she was terrified the guards would hear his cries, which would surely mean death for some. So, she took the "little warm body in her hands, kissed the smooth face, then strangled him and buried him under a mountain of corpses waiting to be cremated."