And from the depths of your wounds, I will heal you...- Dr Gaston Revel

This book "And from the depths of your wounds, I will heal you..." is a first-hand account by a Jewish doctor from Alsace, Dr Gaston Revel, who was on a mission in Germany in the camps for displaced persons, together with other OSE doctors who collectively participated in reports on the health conditions of these "DPs" (Displaced People).

Personal testimonies and official reports interact and enrich each other in this book. Dr Gaston Revel’s memoirs cover a life of service to others in France during and after the Second World War. In 1945, he responded to two missions of the OSE and the Joint in the DP camps, first in Buchenwald, from where he had to take the sickest adolescents to Switzerland, then in Neustadt, near the Baltic Sea in the British occupation zone, where he had to check the health of the Jews. He describes in great detail a dreadful situation, in which Jews were treated as pariahs and became stateless people whom nobody wanted. 

This book is therefore also a cry of distress, revolt and hope, which the title summarises well with this verse from the prophet Jeremiah: «And from the depths of your wounds, I will heal you...» (Jeremiah, chapter 30, verse 17).

Presented and annotated by Katy Hazan
372 pages, 95 illustrations
Collection Témoignages de la Shoah, Éditions Le Manuscrit / Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.
Novembre 2022