on a tip from SondraK
Why One Auschwitz Survivor Avoided Doctors for 65 Years
By Christoph Schult
Christoph Schult
Yitzhak
Ganon survived Auschwitz SS doctor Josef Mengele's medical experiments
-- and swore never to set foot in a hospital again.
Sixty-five years ago, infamous
Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele removed Yitzhak Ganon's kidney without
anesthesia. The Greek-born Jew swore never to see a doctor again --
until a heart attack last month brought his horrific tale into the open.
He is a thin man. His wine-red cardigan is a little too big, and his
legs are like matchsticks in his brown pants. Yitzhak Ganon takes care
of himself. He's freshly shaven, his white mustache neatly trimmed. The
85-year-old sits on a gray sofa, with a cushion supporting his back. He
is too weak to stand by himself, but he still greets a guest in German:
"Guten Tag."
Speaking is hard for him. "Slowly, Abba," his daughter Iris says, and
brings him a glass of water. Her father has never in his life
complained of any pain, she says.
A month ago he came back from his morning walk and lay down. "Are
you sick, Papa?" Iris asked. "No, just a little tired," Yitzhak Ganon
answered, before going to sleep. But after a few hours he was still
tired. "I don't need a doctor," he told his daughter.
The next morning things were even worse. Ganon's wife and daughter
called a doctor, who diagnosed a viral infection and told him to go to
the hospital. Ganon resisted, but finally realized his life was in
danger. At some point he stopped fighting the doctor's orders.
'Just One Kidney'
His family brought him to the hospital in his home town of Petach
Tikva near Tel Aviv. He had hardly been admitted when he lost
consciousness. Heart attack, the doctor said. The blood clots were
cleared with the help of tiny balloons, and the doctors put five stents
in him. "We thought he wouldn't survive the operation," said Eli Lev,
the doctor. "Especially since he had just one kidney."
When Yitzhak Ganon came to, he told the doctors where he lost the
other kidney -- and why he had avoided doctors for 65 years. A reporter
from the Israeli paper Maariv heard about the story. And now,
weeks after the operation, Ganon is ready to tell his story to a German
reporter for the first time.
He stretches his back and looks at a photo on the living room wall.
It shows the Acropolis in Athens. "I come from Arta, a small city in
northern Greece. It happened on Saturday, March 25, 1944. We had just
lit the candles to celebrate the Sabbath when an SS officer and a Greek
policeman burst into the house. They told us we should get ourselves
ready for a big trip."
The 85-year-old slides the sleeve of his shirt up and uncovers his
left forearm. The number 182558 is tattooed there in dark-blue ink.
Tied Down
The transport to Auschwitz took two weeks. His sick father died on
the journey. Upon arrival, they had to strip and submit to an
inspection. Ganon's mother and five siblings were then sent to the gas
chambers.
Yitzhak Ganon was taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau hospital, where
Josef Mengele, the so-called "Angel of Death," conducted grisly
experiments on Jewish prisoners.
Ganon had to lie down on a table and was tied down. Without any
anesthetics, Mengele cut him open and removed his kidney. "I saw the
kidney pulsing in his hand and cried like a crazy man," Ganon says. "I
screamed the 'Shema Yisrael.' I begged for death, to stop the
suffering."
After the "operation," he had to work in the Auschwitz sewing room
without painkillers. Among other things, he had to clean bloody medical
instruments. Once, he had to spend the whole night in a bath of
ice-cold water because Mengele wanted to "test" his lung function.
Altogether, Ganon spent six and a half months in the concentration
camp's hospital.
'Just Fatigue'
When they had no more use for him, the Nazis sent him to the gas
chamber. He survived only by chance: The gas chamber held only 200
people. Ganon was number 201.
On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops.
Yitzhak Ganon made it back to Greece and found his surviving siblings
-- a brother and a sister -- and emigrated to Israel in 1949. He got
married. And he swore never to go to a doctor again. "Whenever he was
sick, even when it was really bad," his wife Ahuva says, "he told me it
was just fatigue."
But now Ganon is happy he finally went to the hospital after his
heart attack. One week later, he had another heart attack, and was
given a pacemaker. "If the doctors hadn't been there," he says, smiling
for the first time, "I would be dead now." Yitzhak Ganon has survived,
again.
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