On February 11 at 6:00 PM we invite you to the museum’s main hall for a meeting about the book “I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz.” This is the harrowing testimony of Gisella Perl — a Jewish doctor who saved women’s lives in the death camp by doing things that are hard to speak about without a trembling voice. Her memoirs have just been published in Polish for the first time thanks to Zohar Publishing.
Gisella Perl (1907–1988) was born in Sighetu Marmației (then Austro‑Hungary, now Romania). She was the first woman to practice medicine in her hometown. In 1944, together with her husband, son, and parents, she was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz, where she was placed in the women’s camp in Birkenau. There she revealed herself as a physician and from that time — without basic instruments or medicines — provided medical help to the imprisoned women. In terrible hygienic conditions, under cover of night, she performed clandestine abortions that saved the lives of hundreds of women. Faced with a lack of medical means, she invented stories for her patients that often sustained their will to live.
Participants in the discussion will include:
This will not be an easy meeting. But it will be important.
Place: POLIN Museum, main hall
Date: Wednesday, February 11, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM
Language: discussion in Polish
Admission: free entry
Let us know in the comments if you plan to join us. Or tag someone you want to tell about this.
About the speakers:
Maciej Jacek Klich — sociologist, translator, filmmaker and publisher. He studies evil and its social conditions, with special attention to the Holocaust and issues related to Auschwitz. He is, among others, the translator of Robert J. Lifton’s book "The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide."
Zuzanna Hertzberg — painter, author of installations and performative actions, activist and educator. She is interested in memory, corporeality, identity and geopolitics. In 2018 she received a doctoral degree from the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
Karolina Sulej — journalist and reporter publishing, among others, in "Wysokie Obcasy", "Pismo" and "Vogue." A doctoral candidate at the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw; author of reportage books about clothing and objects in concentration camps and the Holocaust.
About the POLIN Reading Room series: Czytelnia POLIN
