Anne Spoerry (13 May 1918 – 2 February 1999) was a French-born physician, based for most of her career in Kenya as a "flying doctor" affiliated with
Amref Health Africa.
Early life and education
Anne Marie Spoerry was born in
Cannes, France
Cannes ( , , ; oc, Canas) is a city located on the French Riviera. It is a commune located in the Alpes-Maritimes department, and host city of the annual Cannes Film Festival, Midem, and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The ci ...
, the daughter of Henry Spoerry and Jeanne Schlumberger. Her brother was architect
François Spoerry
François Henry Spoerry (28 December 1912 – 11 January 1999) was a French architect, developer, and urban planner that created the seaside town of Port Grimaud. He was an Officier of the Légion d'honneur and an Officier of the Ordre des A ...
. As a girl she attended the
Francis Holland School
Francis Holland School is the name of two separate private day schools for girls in central London, England, governed by the Francis Holland (Church of England) Schools Trust. The schools are located at Clarence Gate (near Regent's Park NW1) ...
in London. While she was still in medical school in Paris, she joined the French resistance during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
. She was arrested in 1943, and spent some time in the German
Ravensbrück concentration camp for her activities.
Inmate at Ravensbrück
Spoerry's actions at the camp have been controversial; known as "Dr. Claude," she became a friend and possibly a lover of her bloc's notorious
kapo
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Also called "prisoner self-administrat ...
,
Carmen Mory, and she has been accused of torturing the prisoners.
After World War II, Spoerry finished her studies in tropical medicine at the
University of Basel
The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universit ...
.
However, she has also been charged by the
Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects, and subsequently she was tried in both a court in Switzerland and a military tribunal in Paris for complicity in crimes on prisoners including torture; she was found not guilty. A
Free French Forces
__NOTOC__
The French Liberation Army (french: Armée française de la Libération or AFL) was the reunified French Army that arose from the merging of the Armée d'Afrique with the prior Free French Forces (french: Forces françaises libres, l ...
"Court of Honour" in Paris in 1946, however, "found Spoerry guilty of impersonating a doctor, being a traitor to the French and bringing shame on France through inhumane behaviour. She was disbarred from the Free French Forces and exiled from France for 25 years."
New life in Africa
Spoerry departed France in 1948, first finding work as a doctor at a women's hospital in Yemen
Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...
, and eventually settling in the Kenya
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n highlands, where she lived on a cooperative farm and practised medicine. She also founded the first Girl Guides
Girl Guides (known as Girl Scouts in the United States and some other countries) is a worldwide movement, originally and largely still designed for girls and women only. The movement began in 1909 when girls requested to join the then-grassroot ...
troop in the region. At Kenyan independence
A part of Eastern Africa, the territory of what is known as Kenya has seen Homo (genus), human habitation since the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic. The Bantu expansion from a West African centre of dispersal reached the area by the 1st mill ...
, she decided to stay and purchased a small farm. In her forties, Spoerry learned to pilot a small plane so that she could practise medicine over a wider rural area, and reach island populations. In 1963 she became the first female member of the AMREF "Flying Doctors," delivering babies and administering vaccines along with other medical care. In her work, she also carried mail and basic supplies to remote locations. Richard Leakey
Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (19 December 1944 – 2 January 2022) was a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Leakey held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions of archaeology and wildlife conse ...
praised Spoerry's work, saying, "She probably saved more lives than any other individual in east Africaif not the whole continent."[
Spoerry's memoir, ''On m'appelle Mama Daktari'', was published in French in 1994.
Spoerry died in 1999, age 80, after a stroke in ]Nairobi
Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper h ...
; she was buried on the island of Lamu. A team of seaborne doctors and veterinarians in the same archipelago named their project for Spoerry.
Remembrance
In 2018 author and researcher John Heminway published a biography of Spoerry, which examined in detail her wartime activities and then her work in Africa. His research also shed light on Spoerry's controversial World War II past.[
]
References
Further reading
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Spoerry, Anne
1918 births
1999 deaths
People from Cannes
Kenyan general practitioners
People educated at Francis Holland School
French tropical physicians
French women aviators
Ravensbrück concentration camp survivors
20th-century Kenyan physicians
20th-century French women
French expatriates in the United Kingdom
French emigrants
Immigrants to Kenya