The Auschwitz doctor who couldn't 'do no harm'

[GeoWilliam750]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200526-dr-gisella-perl-the-auschwitz-doctor-who-saved-lives?ocid=ww.social.link.twitter

"Gisella Perl did not have the luxury of doing no harm. Instead, the Hungarian gynaecologist worked to save lives and minimise the harm she witnessed as a doctor in Auschwitz.

On 15 April 1945, Dr Gisella Perl delivered a crying, screaming baby. As for all of her other deliveries in the last year, the Hungarian gynaecologist had no tools, no anaesthetics and no assistance. The mother, a young Polish woman named Marusa, was feverish and weak. But there was one major difference: unlike the others, this baby would live.

As Marusa pushed through the last stages of labour, the two women heard a shout of liberation go up. Trumpets sounded, and British soldiers began storming the barbed-wire fences of Bergen-Belsen. To Perl, Marusa’s final scream sounded “almost jubilant”.

But as Marusa held the newborn in her arms, her condition began to worsen. Her face and lips grew pale, and blood coursed out between her legs. Perl knew she needed to operate, but she had no instruments. Outside the barracks, she ran into a high-ranking British soldier and begged for antiseptic and water – luxuries she had been working without. “Half an hour later I had the water, the disinfectant, and could wash my hands and perform the operation, not as a helpless prisoner, but as a doctor,” she would recall in her 1948 memoir I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz."