2011: Book 13

I Was A Doctor in Auschwitz by Dr. Gisella Perl


191 pages

Completed 2/15/11

This short but heart-wrenching tale of Dr. Perl, an obstetrician given atrocious conditions to "heal" the condemned during the Holocaust, she was deemed the "Angel and Abortionist" in more recent years. Conducting manual abortions in the filthy barracks, Perl saved both mothers from immediate death and newborns from entering such conditions, doomed for death. The emotion felt by Perl is conveyed in short, layman terms, but the reader cannot help but ache for this woman trained to bring healthy babies into the world to mothers who so desperately wanted them who was forced to abort the very lives she strived to create.

Saved from death, albeit barely, because of her doctoring skills, when liberation nears Auschwitz, Perl is forced to travel to the horrific Belsen Bergen camp, where death seemed inevitable. But the end of the war came, and with it, months more of caring for the ill and wounded. While this memoir was devastating and atrocious, what I found in my copy of it shook me to the core.

I picked my copy up when I worked at a used bookstore and it came in but wasn't eligible to be shelved for sale. It's sat on my bookshelf for the last year or so, and I finally picked it up. I wasn't halfway through, when I realized something was written on the inside cover:

I recommend this book to read for my son because we with my husband arrived 1944 to Auschwitz in a cattle wagon 80 person in one truck, there in the raine [sic] night had to 5 in a line stand hours for selection. They took him left side and the same night put him to the gas chambers and cremate [sic] him. I was taken to cut off all my hair naked...(illegible)...get a few smaller to cover my body to the Bloges in Birkenom (Auschwitz) where I went through the same story what in this book Dr. Gisella Perl writing. - Read this book please to remember how you lost your Father also should read my grandchildren, to know what we went through and shouldn't happen again. 

It is then signed in writing I am having a hard time deciphering, and I am in the process of attempting to find out this woman's name. It looks like Elysa or Olga and either Kerenya or Keremyi or the like. Something about this note, knowing that the person who'd been in possession of the book before me, had experienced the unspeakable horrors accounted for in Perl's story really got to me. I was even more disturbed when I came across passages underlined and notes scribbled in the margins of the Belsen Bergen camp chapter:

January 1945...The highways were crowded with endless columns of marching slaves almost naked in the icy winter, sick and starving human skeletons driven with whips and guns. Those who were too weak to keep up with the column were brained with gun butts. Dead bodies littered the ditches on both sides of the highway, indicating that other camps had previously been evacuated. Those who were brought to Belsen Bergen in cattle cars were no better off than those who had to walk. From this transport me and ...(illegible)...Fischer escaped by one dark night, and they didn't notice, because they shot so many girls they didn't know the right number anymore. We hidden [sic] ourself of snow covered but this like we doing our urine, and we stay there until the transport continue [sic] walking away. Germany this time had the trouble with the near Russian bombing and they running by self also [sic]. How we managing to be free this is another story.


No words can describe the thoughts going through my head when I completed this memoir and thought about this woman whose pen had touched the pages.

LIZ: BOOK #39

Under Observation: Life Inside the McLean Psychiatric Hospital by Lisa Berger and Alexander Vuckovic

288 pages

Completed 10/15/10

A combination of clinical reports and patient activity and the life of a doctor inside a psychiatric facility, Under Observation was more dated than I had hoped. As a student of psychology, I am always drawn to case studies and daily interactions with disturbed patients. However, much like the real world of psychology, the bureaucracy surrounding these patients and the McLean facility bored me.

A lot of medical advances have occured since this book was written, and new findings studied. If I had read more carefully, a book chronicling the treatment of patients in 1995 would not have drawn my interest. However, as a glimpse into a psych wing - albeit a very small window - this book could be considered telling to those simply interested in the accounts of one doctor.

As for myself, I would not recommend this work. Exhausting to the point of repetition, I wonder if I had viewed it differently as an outsider who has never experienced working with this population. I did, however, heartily appreciate the follow-ups on the patients provided at the conclusion of the book.

LIZ: Book #31

The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut

224 pages

Completed 7/26/10

This novel was a bit slow, but nonetheless enjoyable. Focusing on a middle-aged, divorcing doctor posted in a decrepit, quasi-abandoned hospital with a total of five other people in post-aparthied South Africa, he is forced to discover himself when a fresh-faced, young and eager new doctor requests to join the pathetic team.

Disillusioned and stuck - both figuratively and literally - Frank resists change, except when it can benefit him. But putting himself in poor situations - an affair with a married local woman, reliving his military days, and challenging a dangerous ex-leader - leads to devastating consequences, both for himself and others.

While I would say this book is more mystery-like than I normally prefer my fiction to be, it wasn't a bad read. Well-written and eloquent without drowning the reader in words, Galgut is a talented author for sure. Amonst the ruin of the story, though, the ending left me wanting more; and not in a I-need-more-from-this-author kind of way, but more of a this-ending-is-it?! way.