Coming Soon
In conjunction with On the Road Productions, Rosemarie Reed is currently working on a new documentary film entitled “Gisella Perl: I Was A Doctor in Auschwitz.” It will highlight the extraordinary life of a Jewish physician sent to Auschwitz in 1944, where she was ordered to work for the notorious Dr. Joseph Mengele, the German physician and SS Captain of the camp.
The Film
Gisella Perl, was born in 1907 in Maramarosszigt, a Jewish enclave in Hungary. When the Nazis invaded that country in 1944, she was transported to Auschwitz along with her husband and son. Separated upon arrival, she would never see them again. When Dr. Josef Mengele learned that she was a gynecologist, he instructed her to build a hospital in the Hungarian Women’s camp. He instructed Perl to send him all the pregnant women. He told her that he would send them to another camp more equipped to provide better nutrition and better living conditions. She obeyed. However, it soon became evident that Mengele was not providing these pregnant women with better conditions; he was, in fact, ordering their execution.
Vowing never to let this happen again, with no provisions, no clean water, no medicine, no antiseptics, or pain killers, but plenty of filthy floors, she provided abortions to a few thousand women, saving their lives in the hope that once freed from the camp, they would have more children. But the horror does not end here. Some women gave birth to living babies. These babies had to be killed to save the life of the mother.
As it became clear in late 1944 that Germany was losing the war, Perl was sent to Bergen-Belsen and was soon liberated. When learning that her husband, son, and parents were murdered in Auschwitz, she attempted suicide. In 1947 she arrives in New York City on a temporary visa to lecture, sponsored by the Hungarian-Jewish Appeal and the United Jewish Appeal. New York Representative Sol Bloom unsuccessfully petitioned the Justice Department for her permanent residency in the United States. It was not until Eleanor Roosevelt interceded for her did President Truman sign a bill allowing her to stay in the United States. In 1948 she begins to practice medicine again at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
Before Dr. Perl was transported to Auschwitz, she hid her daughter in the hopes that she would make it through the war. While at Mount Sinai Hospital, mother and daughter were reunited. Upon her retirement, she went to live in Herzliya, Israel to be with her daughter and her grandson. There on December 16th, 1988, she dies at age 81.
The Book
In 1948, Perl writes her memoir, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, in which she details the general horrors of the camp, her contact on an almost daily basis with Dr. Josef Mengele, the women she cared for and the abortions and infanticide she had to perform to save their lives.
The film will incorporate numerous stories from her memoir.
