Feeding Death Camp Survivors in WWII by Peggy Scholberg

Former Dachau concentration camp

My mother said it was a “numbing experience” to feed concentration camp, or ‘death camp’ survivors when in France in 1945. She had not quite believed the newspaper accounts of German atrocities, dismissing them as propaganda. “Could man be so cruel?”

The Dachau Death camp opened on March 22, 1933, initially for political prisoners, but later housed Jews and other prosecuted groups. More than 200,000 were imprisoned there and over 40,000 people were murdered or died of illness and hunger. It was liberated on April 29, 1945. Dachau was officially turned into a memorial site in 1965.

Today, in most of Germany, visiting a death camp memorial is a regular part of the school curriculum. Dachau is the most commonly visited camp by school groups in Germany, with around 32% of its visitors being school-aged children. 

Book Excerpt

She met Vivienne going into the mess, the census already completed in her hand. “Fifty-six just liberated from concentration camps. Here’s where your patients are.” She handed her a list: 9 liquid diets, 11 soft, and 30 light diets. These were for men too weak to eat regular diets. “Brace yourself. It’s bad.” Her red hair was wild and tangled.

“I’ve seen starved men before.”

“I thought I had too.” Vivienne’s said, with tears in her eyes.

Kathy put her special diet roster in her pocket, and filled a three-gallon aluminum pitcher of eggnog from a GI can. If these patients had been severely starved, they would welcome eggnog. This was the one combination of dehydrated milk and powdered eggs that Kathy had developed that was as good as the real thing. She sprinkled a dash of nutmeg on top, and added sugar for quick energy. She would add to her “Times” article list: “Carried eggnog to newly liberated starved prisoners.” That had an inspiring sound.

The first patient she visited lay quietly on his back. He didn’t even turn his head when she entered his room. A blood transfusion dripped into a vein that stood out on his fleshless arm as the only substance between skin and bone. The skull-shape of his head showed beneath the pale, translucent skin. His eyes were buried deep in shadowed sockets, his cheeks sunk in hollow jaws. Barely able to breath, he was obviously too weak to eat. Clearly a full glass of eggnog would be too heavy for his emaciated stomach to digest, and the struggle of regurgitation would exhaust him, maybe exhaust the feeble energy that kept him breathing.

She ran back to the mess for cans of orange juice that could be absorbed without taking much energy for digestion. She hurried so this man could begin the tiny sips he could tolerate. His life was saved, though, not by food, but by the blood transfusion. She set two cans of OJ on the table. She lifted the cleaver from its hook on the wall to open the can. She cautiously hit the corner of the cleaver on the can lid. It merely made a dent.

“Bitte, I do it,” Oscar reached for the cleaver.

“Nein! No!” Kathy turned her back to stand between him and the precious juice. She struck the cleaver at the can harder, and again only dented it.

“I help,” said Oscar.

“Don’t you dare touch that juice! You, you…,” she struck again, and this time chopped a hole, “you German!”

She would carry the food to all the starved men—not letting a German PW carry them. Maybe tomorrow she could believe the Germans were ordinary men who wore fatigues just like the GIs wore fatigues, but for now the Germans were monsters.

She returned to the first newly liberated starved patient. She poured a little orange into the spouted cup on the bedside table. If she turned his head and tilted the cup, he wouldn’t need even to suck, just swallow.

His eyes were closed, as though even the effort of seeing were too great. She spoke in a quiet voice, not wanting to wake him if he were just resting, but just wanting him to know she was there. “Would you like some juice?” No answer. He might be French: “Voulez-vous du jus?” Or German: “Apfelsine saft?”

His eyes remained closed. He wasn’t breathing. This was the hospital’s first death.

Girls in a World at War by Peggy Scholberg is available online wherever books are sold.