Roth Per

Roth, Per A Norwegian political prisoner in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany named Per Roth, born in 1914, in Stavanger, worked as a male nurse in the camp hospital, and saved the lives of 11 young Jews. They had been brought from Auschwitz on June 24, 1943, to serve as guinea pigs for the medical staff, headed by Dr. Dohmen. The youngest of the group was Wolf Silberglet, nine years old. Per Roth had been a civil servant working for the police, married and father to a child when he was arrested and deported to Sachsenhausen, accused of involvement in the resistance movement in his country. Testimonies of the survivors attest to the assistance and encouragement Per Roth extended to them during the almost two years he spent in Sachsenhausen. One of the witnesses, Dr. Thomas Gross, declared that Roth risked his life for his sake when the latter erased his name from the list of prisoners that were to be deported to Bergen-Belsen and obtained a number of a non-Jewish prisoner for him, to help conceal his real identity. In the camp, Roth’s behavior was noble, treating the Jewish prisoners very kindly, especially the children. He felt that what he did for them was only his simple duty as a human being. After the war, Roth served as chief of police in Stavanger. Some of the children from Sachsenhausen kept in touch with him. In 1946, a book was written by one of the former prisoners in Sachsenhausen, Franz Ballhorn, Die Kelter Gottes, and in it he mentions the medical experiments conducted in the camp and the role of Per Roth. On August 31, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Per Roth as Righteous Among the Nations.