Nurses – History of Sorts

Nurses who killed.

SS officers and German nurses gather during the dedication ceremony of the new SS hospital in Auschwitz.
Among those pictured are Karl Hoecker, Josef Kramer and SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Heinrich Schwarz. Among the nurses probably are Martha Mzyk and Lotte Nitschke.

Anyone who ever had to go through a medical procedure will know how important the job of a nurse is. When you arrive at the medical facility it is usually a Nurse who sees you first, A nurse will care for you set you mind at ease, often they get to do the mots horrible tasks after or during a surgery. I remember well how some nurses went beyond their duty when I was in hospital.

It is therefore so surprising that so many nurses in the third reich, were willing participants in the mass murder of the disables and also others.

Christian nurses’ associations dominated German nursing when the Nazis rose to power in 1933. At the time, nursing was widely considered to be more of a spiritual calling or a public service than a professional career. The Nazi regime reorganized Germany’s professional nursing associations. It barred Jewish nurses and restricted membership to politically reliable “Aryans.” Nazi propaganda promoted the idea that nursing was a patriotic service to the state. Nazi nurses’ associations encouraged values of militaristic duty and obedience. Nursing schools began indoctrinating students with Nazi ideology through classes on race and eugenics.

Many nurses who did not necessarily support the Nazi regime still implemented its discriminatory and murderous policies through the course of their regular, daily work. Engaging with patients more frequently and directly than doctors, nurses were often the ones who actually applied the regime’s medical policies. Nurses played a central role in the regime’s so-called “euthanasia” program. Under the program, roughly 250,000 children and adults with mental and physical disabilities were murdered. They were killed by starvation, lethal injection, or gassing.

Although some of these nurses reported that they struggled with a guilty conscience, others did not see anything wrong with their actions, and they believed that they were releasing these patients from their suffering.

Staff at the T4 “killing centres”, where the euthanasia programme was carried out, swore an oath of silence and nurses accompanied patients on special buses with windows blacked out to the gas chambers. at one such “killing centre” at Hadamar near Frankfurt in Germany in 1941, nurses and staff drank beer to celebrate the killing of their 10,000th patient in a special ceremony right outside the door of the gas chamber.

Factors influencing the nurses’ willingness to kill are described and include the socialization of the German people toward euthanasia as well as ideological commitment, economic factors, and putative duress.

Although the Nazis actually carried out the mass murder of the disabled, There were sentiments globally towards euthanasia, for example: A 1937 Gallup poll showed that 45% of the American population was in favor of euthanasia for “defective” infants.

Nurses in Nazi Germany were under the illusion that they were remaining true to their professional ethics, unaffected by the social change around them. Nurses weren’t only working in the T4 centres but also in the concentration camps like Auschwitz and Ravensbrück.

During the Ravensbrück Trials several nurses were sentenced to death.

The first Ravensbrück trial was held from December 5, 1946 until February 3, 1947, against sixteen Ravensbrück concentration camp staff and officials. All of them were found guilty. Twelve were sentenced to death. One died during trial and two committed suicide. The death sentences ,except for one, were carried out on May 2—3, 1947, in Hamelin prison.

Elisabeth Marschall was the Head Nurse at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her duties included selecting prisoners for execution, overseeing medical experiments, and selecting which prisoners would be shipped to Auschwitz. At the Hamburg Ravensbrück Trials, she was found guilty and sentenced to death. On 3 May 1947 she was hanged by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint on the gallows in Hameln prison. Aged 60, she was the oldest female Nazi to be executed.

sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-role-of-doctors-and-nurses

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7227577/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1455849/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12735075/

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/nazi-nurses-toasted-10-000th-victim-with-beer-conference-told-1.1144955

https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Elisabeth_Marschall

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01939459922043749

Dina Poljakoff -Jewish nurse who was offered an Iron Cross.

The role of Finland during World War 2 is a strange one. They were part of the axis powers, not so much because they were great fans of the Nazi regime, but because they saw a powerful ally in Germany to fight the soviets.

There were about 2000 Jews in Finland during World War 2, 300 of them were refugees from Germany and Austria.

In 1941 Germany stationed troops in northern Finland and Finland then joined Germany in its attack on the Soviet Union. Some 300 Jews served in the Finnish army during the war. The German authorities requested that the
Finnish government hand over its Jewish community, but the Finns refused.
Reportedly, when SS chief Heinrich Himmler brought up the ׂJewish question
with Prime Minister Johann Wilhelm Rangell in mid-1942, Rangell replied that there was no Jewish question in Finland; he firmly stated that the country had but 2,000 respected Jewish citizens, some of who who fought in the army just like everyone else, and as such closed the issue to discussion. The Germans did not press the issue, as they were afraid to lose Finnish cooperation against the Soviets. However, later that year, Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller convinced the head of the Finnish State Police, Arno Anthoni, to deport Jewish refugees. Undertaken in secret, the deportation plan was discovered by the Finnish cabinet, which managed to stop it from being fully implemented. Nevertheless, eight Jews were handed over to the Germans. Ultimately, only one of the eight survived. Many clergymen and politicians condemned the deportation, and as a result the Finnish government refused to surrender any more Jews to the Germans. The majority of the Finnish Jews and refugees remained unharmed during the war. However they did hand over some Soviet Jewish prisoners of war over to the Nazis.

Finnish Jewish soldiers outside a field synagogue during WW2

Dina Poljakoff was a Finnish nurse. Although she was Jewish, she was offered the Iron Cross by Nazi Germany during World War II.

A native of Finland, Poljakoff was studying dentistry before the outbreak of World War II.During the war, she worked as a nurse for Lotta Svärd, an auxiliary organization associated with the White Guard. She served in the front lines of combat during World War II alongside German military units. She was not the only Jewish nurse to perform such service; her cousin, Chaje Steinbock, also worked as a nurse and accumulated a scrapbook of heartfelt messages of thanks from German soldiers who had been under her care.

Dina Poljakoff made quite an impression on her German patients, to the point that she was nominated for the Iron Cross. She was one of three Finnish Jews to be offered the award; like the other two (Leo Skurnik and Salomon Klass), she did not accept the award. Unlike the other two, she did not ask for her name to be withdrawn from the recipient list, and on the day of the awards ceremony she checked the display table to verify that her award was there, before leaving without it.

Poljakoff immigrated to Israel after the war, where she died in 2005.

sources

Click to access Microsoft%20Word%20-%205852.pdf

https://academic.oup.com/hgs/article-abstract/9/1/70/554146?redirectedFrom=PDF

https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/77291/Poljakoff-Dina.htm

https://frankensaurus.com/Dina_Poljakoff

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Forgotten WWII Heroes- The Nurses

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This is a blog honoring the WWII heroes who had to deal with the aftermath of battles. After the dust temporarily settled the Nurses were confronted with the horrors of war.

Aside from tending to the wounds and pain they were also the ones who comforted the injured troops, often they knew there was no hope but still tried.

Personnel of QAINS(Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service) were the first women to arrive at the Normandy beach head. On 13 June, seven days after the initial landings of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant Colonel Helm arrived with two sisters and soon many more followed. Their purpose was the setting up of a General hospital to house 600 patients. With the assistance of Pioneers and the Royal Army Medical Corps the hospital was quickly established.

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Flight nurse Lt. Mae Olson takes the name of a wounded American soldier being placed aboard a C-47 for air evacuation from Guadalcanal in 1943.

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A C-47 air evacuation team from the 803rd Air Evacuation Transportation Squadron, Lt. Pauline Curry and Tech. Sgt. Lewis Marker, check a patient on a flight over India

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Army nurses landing in Normandy

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British nurse assisting with a leg operation in the General Hospital in Tobruk during 1942.

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1st Lt. Louise Wasson caring for her patient

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The Nurses of WWII -the forgotten Heroes

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The myth that men are the stronger sex has already been dispersed many times, Women have more stamina, a higher pain level and sometimes are physically even stronger. However they never have to suffer the Manflu though, but that is about it.

It was never more true then during WWII. Physically they may not necessarily have been stronger but mentally they were and especially the Nurses who not only have to deal with horrific injuries, they also had to be comforters to those whose lives had been turned upside down, often in a split second. This blog is a tribute to the forgotten heroes, the angels of WWII.

A nurse wraps a bandage around the hand of a Chinese soldier as another wounded soldier limps up for first aid treatment during fighting on the Salween River front in Yunnan Province, China, on June 22, 1943.

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With some of New York’s skyscrapers looming through clouds of gas, some U.S. army nurses at the hospital post at Fort Jay, Governors Island, New York, wear gas masks as they drill on defense precautions, on November 27, 1941.

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As they await assignment to their permanent field installations, these Army nurses go through gas mask drill as part of the many refresher courses being given them at a provisional headquarters hospital training area somewhere in Wales, on May 26, 1944.

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The first contingent of U.S. Army nurses to be sent to an Allied advanced base in New Guinea carry their equipment as they march single file to their quarter on November 12, 1942. The first four in line from right are: Edith Whittaker, Pawtucket, Rhode Island,; Ruth Baucher, Wooster, O.; Helen Lawson, Athens, Tennessee,; and Juanita Hamilton, of Hendersonville, North Carolina.

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U.S. nurses walk along a beach in Normandy, France on July 4, 1944, after they had waded through the surf from their landing craft. They are on their way to field hospitals to care for the wounded allied soldiers.

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Miss Jean Pitcaithy, a nurse with a New Zealand Hospital Unit stationed in Libya, wears goggles to protect her against whipping sands, on June 18, 1942.

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Group of Army Nurses of the 10th Field Hospital (400-bed capacity) posing in front of a 1/4-Ton Truck. The 10th Fld Hosp arrived in the MTO March 19, 1943, .

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WWII nurse and her patient aboard a hospital ship

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British nurses in Sparkhill at the outbreak of WWII

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British Nurses dressed for action during the Second World War

NURSES

Medical Troops in WWII

We often hear the stories of the special forces during WWII and without a shadow of a doubt they were all heroes.

However the heroes that are often forgotten are those of the Medical Corps, while being shot at they ran into the battlefield to attend the wounded. The red cross often functioned as a target for snipers. More then anyone else they put their lives at risk.

Even those who didn’t see action on the battlefields they still had to deal with the aftermath of the battles and the horrors they witnessed would often haunt them for the rest of their lives.

The pictures below are a tribute to the male and female Heroes of the Medical Corps, I salute you.