Berthold Epstein

Berthold Epstein (born April 1, 1890 in Pilsen , † June 9, 1962 in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak pediatrician . In 1942 he was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , where Josef Mengele had him transferred to the Auschwitz “gypsy camp” as a prisoner doctor. Mengele forced Epstein to assist him in his human experiments.

Life

Studies and career

Epstein was a nephew of the Prague pediatrician Alois Epstein (1849-1918), who founded a pediatric school effective beyond Prague, to which Adalbert Czerny , Leopold Moll and Rudolf Fischl can be counted. Berthold Epstein studied medicine from 1908 to 1914 in Prague and Vienna and received his doctorate in Prague in 1914. After the First World War , he worked from 1919 first at the Berlin University Children's Clinic with Adalbert Czerny, then from 1920 at the II. Children's Clinic in the Bohemian State Findel Institute in Prague with Rudolf Fischl, where he also completed his habilitation in 1924 . He examined the so-called " thrush ". Using animal and laboratory experiments and studies on hundreds of mothers, wet nurses and children, he identified horizontal chains of infection that he attributed to yeasts in the mouths of the mothers. In 1932 he became deputy director of the clinic and five years later its director and professor at the German University in Prague . Epstein's research focused on childhood tuberculosis , infant nutrition, congenital syphilis, and social pediatrics.

Epstein was a member of the Pediatric Study Committee of the International Hospital Society and in 1937 became a member of the Advisory Board for Sanatoriums and Humanities at the Czech Ministry of Health. The German nationalist Epstein, however, distanced himself from his Czech colleagues and in 1937 was one of the founders of the German Pediatric Society in Czechoslovakia, an independent association of German paediatricians, of which he also became first president. In the same year he also served as president of the annual meeting of the German Society for Pediatrics in Prague.

Attempt at emigration and deportation

After Czechoslovakia was broken up, Epstein was dismissed as director on February 1, 1939. In April 1939 he tried in vain to emigrate to England . On October 18, 1939, however, he received a residence permit for Norway and was asked to apply as director of the University Children's Hospital in Oslo .

After the German occupation of Norway , Epstein did research on tuberculosis for the Oslo Council of Health . He was arrested on October 25, 1942 by the Norwegian State Police on the orders of the Gestapo and taken to the Berg concentration camp near Tønsberg on October 27 . Following the intervention of the Red Cross , he was allowed to treat in the sickroom. On November 27th, his wife Ottilie was also arrested. On November 28, 1942, the Epsteins were taken to Stettin on the Danube steamer and deported from there to Auschwitz. Soon after their arrival, Epstein's wife was murdered.

Prisoner doctor in Auschwitz concentration camp

Epstein himself received prisoner number 79,104 and was initially imprisoned in the men's camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau and then in the Monowitz subcamp . There have been efforts from various sides, for example the Czech Refugee Trust Fund in England, to get him free. On August 19, 1943, for example, Prince Karl of Sweden intervened personally through the Swedish and German Red Cross .

In August 1943 Josef Mengele took him to the Auschwitz “gypsy camp” as a prison doctor, where the deficiency disease noma had spread, especially among the children interned there . On Mengele's order, Epstein supervised the sick in separate barracks and, together with other inmate doctors, investigated the course, causes and treatment of the noma on Mengele's behalf. Mengele consulted Epstein and other inmate doctors for the scientific processing of his further medical experiments in the fields of twin research and congenital malformations and appointed Epstein to head his experimental laboratory. The prisoner clerk Tadeusz Joachimowski testified that in May 1944 Mengele had also forced Epstein to carry out a selection of one thousand Jews for him for gassing in Birkenau because he had wanted to take in a newly arrived group of thirty "gypsies" in the camp.

After the liberation

After the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, he took part in the medical care of the prisoners left behind in the camp. He later joined the Czechoslovak army as a medical officer and tried in vain to get to England. Until his death he headed the children's department at the Bulovka hospital in Prague.

Publications

• Prognosis and forms of infant tuberculosis Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin, Vienna 1924. (= Medical Clinic / Supplements 20)
• with Ernst Slawik: Proper nutrition and nutritional errors in school age . German Working group f. Public Health, Prague [1934?]
• Guidelines for feeding the infant Prague-Smichov [1937?].

literature

• Eduard Seidler: Jewish paediatricians 1933-1945. Disenfranchised, fled, murdered . 2nd edition, Karger, Freiburg i. Br. 2007.
• Ludmila Hlaváčková, Petr Svobodný: Biographical Lexicon of the German Medical Faculty in Prague 1883-1945 Karolinum Publishing House, Prague 1998, ISBN 9788071845218 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Werner Mendling: vaginosis, vaginitis, cervicitis and salpingitis . 2nd edition, Heidelberg 2006, p. 65.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 104
3. ↑ Helena Kubica: Dr. Mengele and his crimes in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. In: Auschwitz notebooks. Volume 20, State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau 1997, ISSN  0440-5897 , p. 379f.
4. ^ Ulrich Völklein : Josef Mengele. The doctor from Auschwitz. Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-88243-685-9 , p. 135.