The true story of Józef Bellert, the man who organized a hospital for almost 5,000 people in the largest German extermination camp.
| Author: | Szymon Nowak |
| Publisher: | Zona Zero |
| ISBN: | 978-83-66177-88-8 |
| Format: | Softcover 160 x 230 |
| Rights sold: | Spain (Almuzara), Czech Republic (Víkend) |
| Pages: | 368 |
January 1945. 4800 inmates remain still in Auschwitz-Birkenau, unable even to undertake the “death march” to the West. The gas chambers have already been blown up and Soviet troops are pushing into the Germans defences at such speed that the SS fail to kill the few survivors.
On 5 February, JÓZEF BELLERT and a group of about 30 doctors and nurses from Kraków set out for Auschwitz. For eight months he runs what is probably the largest field hospital in Europe. Despite the lack of sewage, water, food and medicine, he will care for his patients. They weigh an average of 30 kg. They suffer from typhus and tuberculosis, diarrhea due to hunger, oedema and decubitus. They are afraid of people in white coats and syringes, which they associate with the phenol injections with which the depraved Germans used to kill sick inmates.
IMPOSSIBLE AS IT MAY SEEM, BELLERT MANAGED TO KEEP ALIVE AND HEAL 4400 OF THOSE 4800 SICK PEOPLE.
Józef Bellert – a silent hero whose biography could cover the life of a dozen people: conspirator, military and health worker in the Pilsudski Legions, independence militant and social activist, soldier during the defence of Poland in 1939 and in the Warsaw Uprising. Later, a modest country doctor in Pinczów.
THE DOCTOR WHO RESTORED DIGNITY, HEALTH AND FAITH IN THE HUMAN BEING TO THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE HELL OF AUSCHWITZ.