Adélaïde Hautval

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Adélaïde Hautval , called Haïdi Hautval (born January 1, 1906 in Hohwald ; † October 12, 1988 by suicide ) was a French psychiatrist and inmate doctor in Auschwitz concentration camp .

Life

Hautval, daughter of a Protestant pastor, studied medicine at the University of Strasbourg . In 1933 she was awarded a doctorate with her dissertation “Contribution to the localization of post-traumatic disorders”. med. PhD . She completed her specialist training as a psychiatrist in 1933. She then worked at clinics in Strasbourg and Switzerland. In 1938 she returned to Le Hohwald to set up an institution for disabled children.

Hautval was arrested in April 1942 while trying to cross the border illegally from occupied France to what is known as Vichy France . In Bourges , Hautval was taken into custody where she was awaiting trial. Due to protests against the treatment of Jewish fellow prisoners by the Gestapo , Hautval was transferred with other political prisoners to the Romainville prison.

At the end of January 1943, Hautval was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp as a "Jew friend" and was soon employed there as a prisoner doctor (prisoner no. 31.802) in the infirmary of the main camp . The on- site doctor Eduard Wirths assigned them to the concentration camp doctor Carl Clauberg , among others , in order to assist him with forced sterilization . On behalf of Eduard Wirth - and in the research interests of his brother Helmut Wirth - she also had to take tissue samples from the cervix. This series of experiments was intended for the early detection of uterine cancer. After Hautval discovered that female Jewish inmates had been sterilized by x-rays , had ovariectomies and had been subjected to medical experiments, she refused to take part in the series of experiments.

Without punishment for her refusal, she was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where she worked as a prisoner doctor and supported fellow prisoners. In Birkenau she was supposed to assist in Josef Mengele's medical experiments , which she also refused. She was able to avoid the invitation to report to the Political Department on August 16, 1943 . Friends in the prisoner infirmary, including Orli Wald , previously administered her sleeping pills and hid Hautval. In August 1944, after suffering from typhoid fever , she was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp , where she was liberated by the Red Army on April 30, 1945 .

After the liberation she looked after the sick prisoners in the camp and arrived in Paris at the end of June 1945 . She began to write down her experiences in the concentration camp and in 1946 was a witness in several military court trials against members of the concentration camp staff. She worked as a school doctor in Besançon and later in a suburb of Paris. Hautval, who lived with her partner, turned against France's Algerian policy in 1961.

Hautval looked after her partner in need of care until her death and took her own life in October 1988. The transcript of her camp experiences, which she revised in 1987, was first published in French in 1991 and in 2008 as a first German edition under the title: Medicine against Humanity. The refusal of a doctor deported to Auschwitz to take part in medical experiments .

Honors

  • Hautval has been the bearer of the Legion of Honor since December 1945 .
  • She was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1965 .
  • In Le Hohwald in 1991 she was honored with a commemorative fountain with a sentence by Hautval on the base: “Think and act according to the clear waters of your being”.
  • A street in Strasbourg bears her name.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Hermann Langbein: People in Auschwitz. Frankfurt am Main, 1980, pp. 264f.
  2. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. An encyclopedia of persons , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 166
  3. ↑ a b Adelaide Hautval - In Memory of a Just ( Memento from May 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), in: Antifaschistische Nachrichten , Issue 20, 1998
  4. ↑ a b c Encyclopedia of the Holocaust ; Piper Verlag, Munich 1998, volume 2, page 198f.
  5. ↑ Hans-Joachim Lang: The women of Block 10. Medical experiments in Auschwitz. Hamburg 2011, pp. 144–166.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Gaby Rehnelt: Think and act true to the clear sources of your being. In: book reviews - informationan 69, p. 45 ( PDF )
  7. ↑ Adélaïde Hautval - her work to save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust , on the side of Yad Vashem
personal data
SURNAME Hautval, Adelaide
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hautval, Haidi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French prisoner doctor in Auschwitz concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Le Hohwald
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1988