Random Stories About The Angel of Auschwitz Saved Thousands of Lives By Defying Nazis (12 items)

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  (#11) She Went On To Deliver Thousands Of Healthy Babies

  Perl was the first to admit her time as a doctor at Auschwitz was more about hastening death than healing - words that stand as a testament to the insanity of the Holocaust. After the war, her story became synonymous with heroism, and she even became friendly with Eleanor Roosevelt who persuaded her to return to medicine. After some years, she returned to work as a gynecologist at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital where she specialized in fertility treatment. Delivering thousands of healthy babies to grateful mothers was a fitting end for Perl who had watched so much suffering in the past. As a way to acknowledge the darkness of Auschwitz, Perl always said the same prayer at the entrance of the delivery room, “God, you owe me a life–a living baby.” And most of the time, her wish was granted.
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  (#8) She Was Forced To Do Things She Would've Found Unthinkable Before The War

  In her memoir, Perl illustrated the deeply nefarious way the Nazis handled the prisoners at Auschwitz, not just torturing them physically but emotionally as well. She wrote:

  "One of the basic Nazi aims was to demoralize, humiliate, ruin us, not only physically but also spiritually. They did everything in their power to push us into the bottomless depths of degradation. Their spies were constantly among us to keep them informed about every thought, every feeling, every reaction we had, and one never knew who was one of their agents. There was only one law in Auschwitz - the law of the jungle - the law of self-preservation. Women who in their former lives were decent self-respecting human beings now stole, lied, spied, beat the others and - if necessary - killed them, in order to save their miserable lives. Stealing became an art, a virtue, something to be proud of."

  In this way, she too became a victim of these circumstances, committing acts she would have otherwise found despicable. But, in these unique conditions, what she knew before in life no longer applied - there were new rules in place, and she had to work within them, no matter how difficult it may have been. The alternative was simply death.
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  (#7) She Couldn't Get The Horrors Of Auschwitz Out Of Her Mind

  When Perl was finally liberated from the hell of the camps, she published a memoir in 1948, I Was a Doctor At Auschwitz, in which she chronicled some of her darkest moments at the camp. The brutal tactics at the camp were legendary, and Perl was deeply scarred by her time there and the lengths she had to go to in saving innocent lives. The senseless violence and death of that time haunted her for many, many years, much of which is carefully recounted in her autobiography.

  "Women were surrounded by a group of SS men and women, who amused themselves by giving these helpless creatures a taste of hell, after which death was a welcome friend... They were beaten with clubs and whips, torn by dogs, dragged around by their hair and kicked in the stomach with heavy German boots. Then, when they collapsed, they were thrown into the crematory–alive."
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  (#12) She Found Her Lost Daughter And Moved To Israel

  Perl was later reunited with her lost daughter, Gabriella, and her grandson. Although life had resumed for Perl, she could not forget the parting scene with her family before they were separated at Auschwitz. As they were removed from the cattle car that fateful day and seized by Nazi officers, she was embraced by her husband and her father who told her, "We will meet someday in Jerusalem." Perl felt it was now time to make that dream come true and moved with her family back to Herzliya, Israel where she would attempt to fulfill this final vow to the loved ones she lost in the Holocaust. Perl died at 81 in 1988 and would be forever remembered as the "Angel of Auschwitz" who brought mercy to the innocent.
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  (#5) She Watched As The Angel Of Death Performed Horrific Experiments On Prisoners

  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. 
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  (#10) She Was Liberated Only To Find Her Family Was Dead

  There was only one other camp during the Holocaust with the same terrifying reputation as Auschwitz - a place called Bergen-Belsen. Towards the end of the war, Perl was transferred there as the Nazis tried to consolidate and dispose of the remaining Jews before approaching armies discovered them. Once she was liberated, she (along with millions of others) began searching for her lost family, only to discover her husband, son, and parents had all died just a few weeks before liberation. As soon as she was able, Perl left Europe and tried to enter the US, but she was heavily interrogated by the naturalization service who suspected her to be a Nazi sympathizer. Her post-traumatic suffering and grief were intense during that time, and she even attempted suicide - but she was finally granted US citizenship in 1951. She went on to deliver many healthy babies afterward, which she felt God owed her.
   

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