Jewish Female Medical Defiance in Block 10

Abstract:This article explores the roles played by three female Jewish inmates— Sylvia Friedmann, Sonja Fritz and Dr. Alina Brewda—who were forced to assist in inhumane medical experiments in Auschwitz. Their own words and those of other survivors are presented to paint a picture, however incomplete, of the impossible and unimaginable choices they were forced to confront in Block 10. Interviews with survivors conducted by the author, along with other survivor accounts and testimony from criminal proceedings against Nazi doctors Carl Clauberg and Horst Schumann, are used to examine the divergent responses of Jewish women forced to work as medical professionals in an environment where all medical norms ceased to be observed.