A Sobbering Letter

The following taken from June Wandrey's, a WWII nurse, letter home regarding what she saw after a German Concentration Camp was liberated the American Army. The quote is taken from Bedpan Commando, The Story of a Combat Nurse during WWII I have just finished reading the book.


6-4-45 Allach, Germany

Dearest family, I'm on night duty with a hundred corpse-like patients, wrecks of humanity...macerated skin drawn over their bones, eyes sunken in wide sockets, hair shaved off. Mostly Jewish, these tortured souls hardly resemble humans. Their bodies are riddled with diseases. Many have tuberculosis, typhus, enterocolitis (constant diarrhea) and huge bed sores. Many cough all night long, as their lungs are in such terrible condition. They break out in great beads of perspiration.

Then there is the roomful of those that are incontinent and irrational. It sounds like the construction crew for the tower of Babel...Poles, Czechs, Russians, Slavs, Bulgarians, Dutch, Hungarians, Germans. What makes it so difficult is that I understand only a few words. Their gratitude tears at my heart when I do something to make them more comfortable or give them a little food or smile at them.

One of the day nurses had a patient that kept leaving his cot and crawling under it to sleep on the bare wooden floor. She decided to put his mattress, sheets and pillow under there too as it seemed to be his favorite place.

The odor from the lack of sanitation over the years makes the whole place smell like rotten, rotten sewage. We wear masks constantly, though they don't keep out the stench. There are commodes in the middle of the room. Patients wear just pajama shirts as they can't get the bottoms down fast enough to use the commodes. God, where are you? Making rounds by flashlight is an eerie sensation. I'll hear calloused footsteps shuffling behind me and turn in time to see four semi-nude skeletons gliding toward the commodes. God, where were you?

You have to gently shake some of the patients to see if they are still alive. Their breathing is so shallow, pulse debatable. Many die in their sleep. I carry their bodies back to a storage room, they are very light, just the weight of their demineralized bones. Each time, I breathe a wee prayer for them. God, are you there? In the morning the strongest patients have latrine detail, it takes two of them to carry a commode pail and dump it. They also sweep the floors and carry out the trash. Many patients are only seventeen. Our men sprayed the camp area to kill the insects that carried many of the diseases.

We were told that the SS guards who controlled the camp used to bring a small pan of food into the ward and throw it on the floor. When the stronger patients scrambled for it, like starving beasts, they were lashed with a long whip. It's a corner of hell.

Too shocked and tired to write anymore. Love, June

What is sobbering, is that such suffering can happen today. The type of hearts that created this suffering still walk amongst us. We still have groups being demonized and dehumanized.