Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Holocaust

  • Marcel Marceau saved children with silence

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “The people who came back from the camps were never able to talk about it…”– Marcel Marceau, French entertainer, explaining why he acted without words Marcel Marceau (1923–2007) entertained people all over the world for sixty years as a mime. He was born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg, France, to a Jewish family.…

  • The Doctors’ Trial and the Nuremberg Code

    Shabrina JarrellCharleston, West Virginia, United States Tracing back to the Hippocratic Oath, which dates to around 400 BC, the principle of autonomy has been fundamental to the concept of informed consent.1,2 The Oath, a pledge historically taken by physicians, outlines several guarding principles of medical ethics. Although it did not specifically mention informed consent, it…

  • Winnie Ille Pu and Dr. Alexander Lenard

    Avi OhryTel Aviv, Israel Sandor (Alexander) Lenard1 was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1910 and died in Dona Irma, Santa Catarina, Brazil in 1972. He was a Jewish poet, author, physician, painter, musician, translator, language teacher, philosopher, and polyglot. A short outline of Lenard’s life events could be summarized as follows: Hungary, medical studies in…

  • Who is “Dr. Filth”?

    Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden Bob Dylan’s song “Desolation Row” (1965) is full of recognizable names, both real (Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Einstein) and fictional (Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet). There is also a “Dr. Filth,” whose identity is a subject for discussion.1 He is introduced with the lyrics: Dr. Filth, he keeps his world/inside of a leather cup/But…

  • Risking it all to save strangers—Remembering Gisella Perl

    Jacquline MusgravePeoria, Arizona, United States Her hands were cracked and covered in mud and dirt as she delivered the baby, broke its little neck, closed its eyes, and buried it in a hole outside. No one would know about this baby, or the others who would meet the same fate. She did it to save…

  • Body heat: September 1944

    Winona WendthLancaster, Massachusetts, United States I traveled up to Terezin against my will. My writing instructor had made the assignment. “Just write down what you see,” he said at nine in the morning while we squeezed into the aisle of a public bus headed out from Prague. The vehicle was packed with dozens of laborers…

  • A writer and a doctor: What a physician’s account of Auschwitz can teach us about the ethics of story-telling in medicine

    Christine HennebergSan Francisco, California, United States In writing this work I am not aiming for any literary success. When I lived through these horrors, which were beyond all imagining, I was not a writer but a doctor. Today, in telling about them, I write not as a reporter but as a doctor.1 The opening “declaration”…