I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz

E-176: International Universities Press. Very Good. 1948. Paperback. Trade PB. 8vo. Yale Garber, Tamarac, FL. 1987. 178 pgs. Reprint. Wrappers lightly worn with some light shelf-wear to the extremities present. Book is free of ownership marks. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. Gisella Perl’s memoir is the extraordinarily candid account of women’s extreme efforts to survive Auschwitz. With writing as powerful as that of Charlotte Delbo and Ruth Kluger, her story individualizes and therefore humanizes a victim of mass dehumanization. Perl accomplished this by representing her life before imprisonment, in Auschwitz and other camps, and in the struggle to remake her life. It is also the first memoir by a woman Holocaust survivor and establishes the model for understanding the gendered Nazi policies and practices targeting Jewish women as racially poisonous. Perl’s memoir is also significant for its inclusion of the Nazis’ Roma victims as well as in-depth representations of Nazi women guards and other personnel. Unlike many important Holocaust memoirs, Perl’s writing is both graphic in its horrific detail and eloquent in its emotional responses. One of the memoir’s major historical contributions is Perl’s account of being forced to work alongside Dr. Josef Mengele in his infamous so-called clinic and using her position to save the lives of other women prisoners. These efforts including infanticide and abortion, topics that would remain silenced for decades and, unfortunately, continue to be marginalized from all too many Holocaust accounts. E-176; 8.8 X 5.6 X 0.8 inches; 189 pages .