Karel Sperber

Karel Sperber was born in Tachov, western Bohemia, in 1910 to a Jewish family. He completed his studies in medicine at the German University in Prague[1] and Vienna.[2]

In 1939, Sperber escaped to Britain[1] following the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Germany. He was prohibited from practising medicine in Britain because he was considered an "alien".[2] Instead, he took up a post as a ship's doctor[1] and purser[3] on the British merchant and passenger ship SS Automedon,[1] which was delivering important papers to the British Far East Command concerning Japan's possible entry into the Second World War.[1]

On 11 November 1940,[4] his ship was attacked and sunk by the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis near Sumatra in Indonesia.[2] Sperber and the other surviving members of the ship's crew were taken first to the floating prison, the Norwegian tanker Storstad,[1] and then to Bordeaux. Whilst interned at the camp hospital in Marseille, he, along with an Indian Dr Mitra, kept a look out whilst an escape tunnel was being dug.[5] In late 1942, Sperber was sent to a prison in Bremen following a journey through a number of prisoner-of-war camps.[2] He saved the lives of many British prisoners at Stalag X-B, when an outbreak of typhus occurred.[3][6]

On 13 December 1942, he entered Auschwitz as a Jewish prisoner,[2] although, as stated in the Geneva convention, he should have been held as a prisoner of war.[7] The number "82512" was tattooed on his arm.[3][8] There, he worked among a number of Nazi physicians including Josef Mengele, Eduard Wirths, and Friedrich Entress.[1] In addition, he was forced to assist SS physician Carl Clauberg in sterilisation experiments on Jewish women. While in Auschwitz, Sperber smuggled a letter to Charles Coward, asking him to inform Sperber's relatives in Sunderland of his whereabouts.[7]

In 1944, he was sent to work at the prisoner infirmary of the Monowitz concentration camp.[1][2][9] On 18 January 1945 he was sent on the death march to Gleiwitz and Buchenwald. After arriving at Buchenwald he and a group of doctors were able to gain admission to the hospital and later worked there as physicians. He subsequently escaped and hid in a forest until he was found by American troops on 1 April 1945.[2][6]

After the war, Sperber returned to England. In December 1945, he sent a deposition to the British war crimes authorities about the atrocities he witnessed at Auschwitz which was subsequently used at the Nuremberg Trials.[8][10]

In 1946, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for the medical services he provided to prisoners of war[6] and he received British citizenship in 1948.[1] He signed on as a ship's doctor again[2] and worked for the British Colonial Medical Service in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and then in Ghana, where in 1957 he died of Hodgkin's lymphoma in Accra.[2]