All the Horrors of War by Bernice Lerner

Author:Bernice Lerner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Outdoor showers at Bergen-Belsen. Any sense of modesty was long gone.

© Imperial War Museum (BU 4237).

***

The 11 Armoured Division left Belsen to do battle with the remaining pockets of German resistance. Traveling 238 miles in twenty-four hours, a far larger party of soldiers arrived on April 18, including troops of 113 Light Anti-aircraft Battalion of the Royal Artillery (RA). One of the biggest problems they faced was how to feed surviving inmates. RA carpenters and anyone who knew anything about building undertook the vast job of adapting and erecting cookhouses. Initially, they served an uncontrolled diet from dustbin-type food containers. To ameliorate the difficulties of feeding thousands, including those too sick to move and who had no one to bring food to them, they pitched “a dump of tentage.” Those able to walk could move into the tents, relieving the overcrowding in the huts.85

Rachel, Elisabeth, and the three sisters from Sighet with whom they had formed a row on the march moved into a tent. Mindi set up a rotation—each night a different girl was responsible for closing the tent’s flap door. On the fourth night, a driving rain soaked the ground. It was Rachel’s turn to pull down the flap. Achy and weak, she could not get up. Elisabeth volunteered to do it for her. Mindi said no. If Rachel was unable to perform her duty, she did not belong in the tent.

Rachel crawled back to the hut. Someone was now sitting in her spot against the wall. She tried to reclaim it. Incensed, the spot’s occupant and those around her kicked and pummeled Rachel until their energy was spent. She had made it through the entire war without anyone laying a hand on her, and now, after the liberation, her own people beat her to a bloody pulp. She was sure she would never again walk upright. Her last thought before losing consciousness: we are no longer human.

***

In fulfilling his vow to save as many lives as possible, Hughes made a heart-wrenching decision. The doctor in him wanted to give each sick and starved person the care he or she needed. As a military leader short on help and time, however, he knew that “thorough diagnosis and elaborate treatment” of individual patients would make it impossible to provide elementary care to greater numbers. The best chance to save the most was to place “those who had a reasonable chance of survival under conditions in which their own tendency to recover could be aided by simple nursing and suitable feeding, and in which further infection could be prevented.” His highly focused plan involved placing inmates into one of three categories: those likely to survive, those likely to die, and those for whom immediate care would mean the difference between life and death. The medical officers going into the huts would have to make a quick determination: Would the individual stand a better chance of surviving if evacuated to receive rudimentary care? Rescue efforts sprang from this principle.86

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