MÉDECINE ET CRIMES CONTRE L’HUMANITÉ / MEDICINE AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY – HAUTVAL

Information

Author:

Adélaïde Hautval

Date:

Félin
2019

Author:

Additional Info

MEDICINE AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: The Refusal of a Doctor Deported to Auschwitz to Participate in Medical Experiments

Rights Holder: Félin
Original Language: French

“From the moment you defend them, you are responsible for what happens to them!”

To never betray what she refers to as the “primary values”, Adélaïde Hautval will have to cross hell and survive 37 months of imprisonment and deportation. She wasn’t Jewish herself; her crime was standing up for them.

As a doctor in Auschwitz, she is assigned to Revier (the infirmary) where she provides some relief and care with the little means she is provided. In the most serious cases, she manages to cover up the diagnosis allowing a certain number of patients to avoid the gas chamber altogether.

Adélaïde Hautval also has to work in the sinister Block 10 where the medical experiments on sterilization took place. At first Adélaïde succeeds in relieving some of the pain of the persecuted youths, as she witnesses the horrors perpetrated by the SS doctors. But when she is given the order to lend a helping hand in these criminal acts, she refuses, putting herself in direct opposition of the Nazis. This is her powerful diary.

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