Adélaide Hautval (1906–1988)

Adélaïde Hautval was born in Le Hohwald in northeastern France, the daughter of a Protestant pastor and his wife. She studied medicine in Strasbourg and became a psychiatrist. In 1942, during World War II, she was arrested by the Germans for attempting to cross from the Vichy Zone of France into the Occupied Zone without permission to attend her mother's funeral in Paris. While imprisoned in Bourges, she protested vigorously against the treatment of Jews and was deported to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Employed as a doctor in the camp, she tried to shield Jewish prisoners who fell ill and courageously refused to participate in barbaric Nazi medical and surgical experiments. In 1944, she was transferred to Ravensbrück. She survived the war, and in 1962, served as one of the major witnesses for Leon Uris, author of the novel Exodus, which portrayed Holocaust events, in his trial for libel in London. In 1965, she was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem. She finished writing a memoir, Médecine et crimes contre l'humanité (Medicine and Crimes Against Humanity), shortly before her death, and entrusted the manuscript to friends who arranged for its publication in 1991. A German edition, entitled Medizin gegen die Menschlichkeit, appeared in 2008.