[Betty Boop]

Dr. Hautval came from a French Protestant family. It wasn't until her mother's funeral in 1942 that Dr. Hautval became an upstander and resistor to the nazis. Going to her mother's funeral, she was trying to cross the demarcation line separating the two zones of France. Awaiting her trial, she spoke out against the Nazis' treatment of the Jews. They responded that if she didn't like how they treated the Jews, she could join them. She was sent to Auschwitz and wore a sign that read "A friend of the Jews." She managed to protect a group of women in her camp from hard labor by helping to hide them in the top bunk. She took care of them best she could. Then, she was asked by "Dr." Eduard Wirths (also an SS officer) if she wanted to practice gynecology. She wanted to see the sterilization experiments she had heard were performed at camps, so she agreed. A quarter-Jewish women and half- Jewish women's ovaries were used as experiments, exterminated by either radiation or surgery.

Dr. Hautval told Wirths that she was completely opposed to these experiments. He couldn't understand why she didn't want to be a part of a project that would preserve a superior race. She replied that "we had no right to depose of the life and destiny of others." She refused to participate in any further experiments. She continued to practice medicine in a nearby camp until she was moved to Ravensbruck camp in 1944. She survived and was freed in 1945.

She spoke as a witness in the Dering v. Uris trial in 1964 (Dering was a doctor working under Wirths.) Dr. Hautval refuted Dering's statement that refusing to obey Nazi orders was useless; in fact, she said, orders to remove a woman's ovaries could be bypassed very easily. The judge in the case said that Hautval was "one of the most impressive and courageous women who had given evidence in the courts of [England]."

I think Dr. Hautval's decision to act was a very smart one. When she became directly affected by Nazi abuse (her arrest and trial) she told them directly that they were wrong. Then she used her skills as a doctor to help other inmates and told the sterilizing doctors directly that she wouldn't help them.

I found the first account about Armin T. Wigner interesting because he had worked on the Armenian genocide (probably why he became an activist for the Jews.) Miep Gies's upstanding-ness was fascinating because she took on the responsibilty for the lives of two whole families, again feeling, like other upstanders that it was her duty to help these families when they were in need.