Caroline Ferriday collection

Caroline Ferriday collection 

Caroline Woolsey Ferriday (1902-1990) was the only child of Henry Ferriday, a New York dry goods merchant, and Eliza Woolsey Ferriday. After a brief acting career on Broadway, she began working as a volunteer at the French consulate in New York City. During World War II she raised money to assist French children, particularly war orphans. After the war, she aided victims of pseudo-scientific experiments conducted at Nazi concentration camps, including the sulfonamide experiments at Ravensbrück and the experiments conducted in Block 10 at Auschwitz, who sought compensation from the Federal Republic of Germany. Following a 1950 United Nations Economic and Social Council resolution, the Bonn government decided in July 1951 to offer “effective assistance” to the victims. The UN acted as an intermediary to Bonn, the Association des déportées et internées de la Résistance (ADIR) in France transmitted applications to the UN, and Ferriday became involved as the Friends of the ADIR liaison in New York. The German payouts were insufficient, and Ferriday pushed for larger awards. In 1958 she convinced Norman Cousins to publish an article about the Ravensbrück sulfonamide victims in The Saturday Review. These victims were Polish female political prisoners who endured horrendous suffering at the hands of Dr. Karl Gebhardt, Dr. Fritz Fischer, Dr. Herta Oberheuser, and others. The German doctors sliced their legs open and inserted foreign substances to imitate the effects of shrapnel wounds. Germany initially refused to grant these women compensation for their injuries on the grounds that the Bonn government did not have diplomatic relations with Poland. Cousins’ article garnered a great deal of interest and support among the public. Dr. William M. Hitzig and a group of Polish doctors examined the victims in Warsaw in September 1958 and selected thirty-five to visit the United States to benefit from medical treatment. In 1959 the Friends of the ADIR hired Benjamin Ferencz to negotiate for financial relief from the German government for the Polish victims of Nazi experiments, and in 1961 the German government finally awarded compensation to be paid to the victims via the International Committee of the Red Cross. Ferriday also encouraged friends in the British medical establishment to bring pressure to bear on German medical authorities for the revocation of Dr. Herta Oberheuser's license to practice. Oberheuser was a physician at Ravensbrück responsible for many of the experiments. Oberheuser had resumed her medical practice as a pediatrician after her release from prison for crimes against humanity, but her medical license was revoked in 1960. 

Caroline Ferriday collection