Out of the Ashes (2003 film)

Out of the Ashes is a 2003 American made-for-television biographical drama film that was released by Showtime. It is a dramatization of the life of Holocaust concentration camp survivor Gisella Perl and is based on her book I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz.^[1][2] The film is dedicated to the memory of Richard Crenna, who died three months before it was released.

Gisella Perl, a Jewish-Hungarian gynecologist from Sighetul Marmatiei, Romania, testifies before an Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) review board consisting of three men. Perl is seeking to be granted citizenship after passing the New York State Medical Licensing Board examinations, wishing to begin practicing in New York. She recounts her early life when she aspired to be a doctor despite the admonishments of her father, her time practicing as a gynecologist before the German invasion, and her experiences as prisoner #25404, where she provided what medical care she could to fellow prisoners. Her most controversial actions included providing late-term abortions to pregnant women in order to save their lives. These pregnant women would otherwise have been killed immediately or subjected to the torture of horrific "medical" experiments.

Perl is accused of "colluding" with the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who directed experiments on pregnant female inmates at the Auschwitz concentration camp. As the review board questions her over several days, she becomes increasingly emotional and questions her own determination to survive, as well as her guilt at having lived while so many others did not. She testifies that despite her intention to keep herself and others alive, she unknowingly became part of the Nazi efforts to kill, but she held on to the hope that the lives of the women she saved would undermine the efforts of the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish race. After she is granted citizenship and begins to practice in New York, she gets a call to attend one of the women whose first baby she had aborted in the camp. She delivers the baby and sees her wish that the Jewish race will survive fulfilled.^[3]

• Out of the Ashes at IMDb
• Out of the Ashes at the TCM Movie Database
• Out of the Ashes at AllMovie