White smocks, yellow stars. When I told my friend Yann, that I was having trouble finding a way to measure up and give an account of what Dr. She had finished medical school and worked at the Hospital Rothschild in Paris. The hospital was where sick, Jewish prisoners from the Nazi-run detention center in Drancy were sent for treatment. Pregnant women were sent there as well to give birth. Following their treatment, the men, women, and children were returned to Drancy before being transported on trains.
In all, and at a minimum, 75, Jews from France were deported to concentration camps. This was not the case at the hospital where the undertaking operated in three buildings and was run by just one person β Claire Heyman β who was a social worker at the hospital. In typical hubs, information flows in and out, actions flow in and resulting actions flow out. Claire established the group, recruited members, and orchestrated all escape plans.
Inside the hospital, she was the only one who truly knew everything and everyone. This was a need-to-know operation; but plans often required the work of more than one person. Only the guards at the gate would think she was working in the lab. Suffice to say, not everyone who worked at the hospital was part of the network the hospital had employees and yet what was shared by everyone throughout Rothschild was the will to impede the directives of the Germans and slow down the return of internees to Drancy.
Patients were given fake plaster casts and bandages. Charts were lost, diagnostics, x-rays were faked or substituted, and the dates of imaginary surgical procedures were rescheduled, over and over, to later imaginary dates. To get a child out of Drancy and moved to the hospital, Drs. The tunnels were, by design, the way medical staff could easily circulate between buildings; they also facilitated escapes.
Men and women in the Drancy prison wards were segregated; men on the ground floor female patients occupied the second. When Colette started working at the hospital in December , she was assigned to pavilion 7 and reported to the Department of General Medicine run by Professor Isch-Wall. Colette made rounds twice during the day to visit and examine patients, review charts, verify medication and treatments, and work in the pharmacy and lab.
