The days on the farm were a constant routine day after day. In the afternoon, we went out into the fields to harvest the wheat, oats, and barley, and in the autumn the farmer harvested the beets as well. Happily, though, I was gone before the fall, since I left in early September. To conduct the harvest, we loaded hay onto the horse-drawn carts with a pitchfork, led the horses to pull the machines that cut the grain, bundled it, and used pitchforks to load these bundles onto a cart. We did all this work by hand because the farmer had no motorized equipment.
At least we had help. Some of the village people helped us bundle the grain, because after the war most people were destitute and would do almost anything to earn a little money. Once we loaded the hay and crops onto the carts, we transported them to the barn, where we unloaded them.
I found the work especially hard and tiring, never having worked on a farm before, and initially I had no idea what I was doing. The other men laughed at my slowness, and one man always called me “the professor,” because I talked about ideas all the time. He’d say, “Come on, young Wolf. Get your head out of the clouds and show a little speed!”
At the end of the day, when we got back to the house, the horses’ work was finished, but mine was not, since I now had to give them water, brush them, and clean their hooves. While the other men fed the pigs, I cleaned the stables. I also had to pile up the horse and cow manure to be used as fertilizer. I stored it near the house and later put it in a wheelbarrow and wheeled it to the fields so it could be put on the crops.
Despite all my hard work, I received no pay. When I asked the farmer about this after a few weeks, asking, “Can you start paying me now, since I have been here for four weeks and have learned what to do?” the farmer simply said, “You’re still inept and slow. You’re only entitled to your food, just like we told you when we hired you.”
I felt he was being unfair to only pay me a meager food ration after I had proved myself, but I also felt there was little I could do. I didn’t know where else I could go, and I thought about all the things I had regretted after I moved on to something else. First, I couldn’t wait to be out of the Adolf Hitler Schule. Previously, I had longed for the day I would be released from prison camp. Now, here I was, again wishing myself somewhere else.
At last, one evening, a break in the monotony occurred, when I was near the stable getting ready for my evening chores with the horses. An American appeared in the barnyard and told me, “I’m with four other soldiers, and we got stuck in the mud in the woods near the house. Can you bring some horses to pull our jeep out of the mud?”
I didn’t know how the farmer and his wife would feel about this, since these soldiers had been the enemy. But I felt they needed help. “Sure, I can help you,” I said.
I attached the horses to the jeep with chains, and as the soldiers stood beside it, I directed the horses to pull forward. For a few minutes, they struggled and strained, and the jeep barely moved. But I continued to urge the horses forward, and finally, they pulled the jeep back onto the road. “Thank you so much. We could never do this without you,” the American soldier who was driving said, as the other soldiers climbed back into the jeep.
He gratefully handed me four packs of cigarettes—Chesterfields—a valuable commodity at that time. Since I didn’t smoke, I gave them to the farmer and described how I had helped. At least he wasn’t angry that I had used his horses. However, just as he was greedy about everything else, he asked me, “Why didn’t you ask them for more cigarettes?”
“They didn’t have any more,” I said. “They told me, ‘Kid, we’re sorry but we don’t have more cigarettes with us. But thanks again so much for getting us out of the mud!’” Fortunately, I only spent a couple of months on the farm. It wasn’t long before I heard about an opening for nurses’ helpers in a hospital near my home. The next phase of my life was about to begin.
Chapter 10
Medical Training and a University Education
After a few months on the farm one of my classmates told me that the local county hospital, which served several towns, was looking for nurses’ helpers. Since I was interested in medicine, I applied immediately and was accepted. A few days later, I began my job at an eight- hundred-bed hospital, located in an imposing five-story white stone building. Since the job began shortly after the war and electricity was irregular, initially I worked with another young man to carry the patients on a gurney up a staircase to the prep room, where the nurses prepared them for surgery. After the doctors anesthetized the patients and operated on them for several hours, we carried the patients back downstairs to their rooms.
Besides helping the young man with the gurney, I worked with five other helpers, all former classmates from the Friedrich Wilhelm Schule. We were glad to be together again and were great friends. In our free time we enjoyed rowing together as members of a rowing club and rowed up the Werra River. We had dances at the clubhouse, where we practiced our dancing skills with the young girls of the area. Since I was rather inept, I stepped on many toes.
After a few weeks, the nurses allowed us to help them by taking the patients’ pulses and temperatures. We also talked to the patients about their illnesses and families, and tried to reassure them about their condition.
During breaks we came to be very friendly with the nurses, who kindly invited us to eat with them in a small kitchen on the floor where we worked. They even fed us well with some of the food supplies for patients.
Most of the nurses were young women who had attended nursing school rather than a university, and we could easily tell which school they attended, as they each wore a different colored uniform designating a particular school. These uniforms consisted of a skirt, a blouse with a bib apron over the top, small hats on the backs of their heads, and sturdy, flat white shoes. Each group of nurses worked for a time at one hospital, then moved to another.
While the nurses lived together in the same residence hall, an older nurse from each school led each group. She enforced that school’s rules, which varied from very lax to super strict. For example, the nurses in the blue uniforms from the country hospital’s nursing school had to follow particularly stringent rules. They not only lived together in a residence hall adjacent to the hospital, but aside from going to and from work, they could only go outside their residence hall for one hour a day. So they lived much like prisoners in isolation, who were confined to a small cell for twenty-three hours and had only one hour outside for individual recreation. The nurses couldn’t even go to a movie.
I learned about these harsh restrictions when I talked to a young student nurse who was a refugee from Silesia, an area of Germany next to Poland and now occupied by the Russians, who drove the Germans out after the war. As we stood in the hospital corridor talking, the student nurse Marta told me, “Many of the Silesians were killed, and many of the women were raped by the Russians and the Poles. The Silesians suffered greatly under German occupation and felt very vengeful toward the Germans. So now we have to follow very strict rules. It’s supposed to be for our own protection from the Germans today.”
“I think the rules you have to live by are unreasonably strict,” I told her. “Why don’t you join another order of nurses with more reasonable rules?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said and went back to work. Unfortunately, the forty-something head nurse saw us talking, and I soon saw her questioning the Silesian nurse down the hall. Apparently, the head nurse asked Marta to report what I had said, and moments later, the head nurse stormed over to me. She looked stern and forbidding, her hair pulled back tightly into a bun, as she approached and asked me angrily, “How dare you suggest that our rules are too strict or that a student nurse should live somewhere else?”
As I groped for words, not sure what to say, she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me along with her. “You’ll answer for this to the director,” she said. With me in tow, my heart pounding, she headed down the corridor to the hospital director’s office. As we entered his off
ice, he looked severe and imposing in his white doctor’s coat, which hung down over his dark blue suit. “Sit down,” he said and pointed to two chairs across from his desk.
After we sat down, the head nurse complained about me, explaining how I had dared to tell a student nurse what I thought about the rules of her order. “He even advised the nurse to find someplace else to live that had looser rules,” she concluded.
For a moment, I sat there anxiously, contemplating my fate and fearing expulsion from the hospital. I was not sure what I could say in my defense. Then I noticed that the director was suppressing a smile as the head nurse got up and marched out.
Once she was gone, the director reached across the desk, shook my hand, and patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about any punishment,” he told me. “You just told the other nurse what you thought.” The director gave me a slight wink, as if he seemed to admire my audacity. I left the office feeling relieved and lucky. A few minutes later, I resumed work by checking the temperatures and pulses of a half dozen patients.
Later several young doctors came over to me, while I was eating in the kitchen, and shook my hand to congratulate me. “Bravo for not being intimidated by the head nurse,” one said. “She’s such a ferocious disciplinarian—we’re all afraid of her,” said another. “You stood up to her, bravo!” a third doctor said.
Though I really hadn’t stood up to her and was lucky the director saw the humor in the situation, I took my accolades gratefully. “Thank you for your support,” I replied. Afterward, I noticed that the head nurse kept a wary eye on me, always watching me like a hawk. When I walked down the hall doing my rounds, whenever she saw me, she glared at me with a slight frown. I felt she was looking at me as her prey, and I eagerly rushed ahead to turn the corner to get away from her stare. Still, I had to admit that the excellent performance of the doctors and nurses in the hospital owed a great deal to her vigilance. She ran a very tight ship and wanted to make sure that everyone did their duty in treating the patients with the best care possible.
Getting to Know Patients
Sometimes we had non-German patients, and I was surprised but gratified to find that the hospital did not discriminate against any patients who had been denied treatment only a few years before, when they were considered enemies of the regime. Many of these patients were Jewish or Russian, or from other persecuted minority groups, and they had been in concentration camps or transferred to displaced persons camps before coming to the hospital for treatment for some illness or injury. Now the doctors and nurses treated them with the same attention and concern as everyone else.
I experienced this supportive attitude toward minority patients one day when I went around the ward taking temperatures and pulses. One older Jewish man glanced down from his bed and noticed my raggedy, too-small shoes. He said, “If you take good care of me, I’ll get you new shoes from the camp after I get out of the hospital.”
Since I looked surprised by his statement, he explained, “We get these shoes because the camps are funded by international relief organizations. They bring us clothing, food, and other supplies that are donated to us.”
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” I told him. “I’ll take good care of you anyway.” He just smiled as I left to see other patients.
A few days after he was released from the hospital, he appeared in the ward holding a new pair of shoes and handed them to me. “They’re for you for being so nice to me,” he said. When I tried on the shoes, they fit—the first new shoes I’d had in years. My feet were already a strange shape from wearing shoes that were several sizes too small. “Thank you so much,” I said, grateful for his kind gesture.
Among the other minority patients was a group of former Russian POWs, who were in a ward with other patients, around twelve to each ward. They were in their thirties and forties and suffered from a variety of ailments, from appendicitis to vitamin deficiencies. When I came into their room, they called out to me, “Hello, little nachalnik,” which means “little officer,” meant as a term of endearment. After I took their vitals, we chatted, and they loved to tell me about their lives at home as if I were a relative. I loved the way they embraced me with such kindness. I had never met any Russians before and had thought of them as the evil enemy. So now I was even more perplexed by the extreme hatred that the Germans directed at them during the war, regarding them as their bitter enemies. Now, meeting them personally in the hospital, I saw that they were people with families, hometowns, and day-to-day problems.
Some days the Russian POWs gave me chocolates they had gotten at the displaced persons camp and made a big production out of giving them to me. They held up the chocolates like trophies as they announced, “Here are delicious chocolates for our little nachalnik, who is thin like a weed. Perhaps this will fatten you up.”
Knowing the kindness of these Russians, I was upset to hear about the mass tragedy that befell a group of Russians, both men and women, who lived in a house in town. They had been brought from Russia to work in German factories and farms, and to serve as servants in German homes. Many members of this group were singers, actors, and musicians, and one night they found a container car on the railroad tracks, holding what they thought was drinking alcohol. In a celebratory mood, knowing they would soon be repatriated, they emptied the contents into jugs and prepared to have a big party. The alcohol, however, was methyl alcohol, which is used for antifreeze, solvent, and fuel, and is particularly deadly. All twenty-five of them died and were buried in the German cemetery, which can still be visited. I was surprised to see many Germans express sorrow over this mass death since the German people had thought of the Russians as subhuman during the war. Yet as I talked to others in the hospital and to my family and friends, I found them all sad and horrified by these senseless deaths. This cheerful and energetic group had been well liked in town.
Learning New Techniques
After I spent several weeks helping out with routine procedures, the doctors sometimes asked me to assist during routine operations such as appendectomies. For me, this was very exciting and gratifying, for now I could see myself at the beginning of my career as a doctor, leading a team doing surgery in the future.
In assisting with the appendectomies, I had to hold the ribs apart so the doctors could reach the appendix. I held the ribs firmly as the doctors worked in this small space with their knives and other equipment. I also lifted the patients’ legs during varicose vein surgery so the surgeon could carefully open up and suture their veins.
During these operations I was frightened, challenged, and proud all at once. But most of all, I was relieved when the operation was completed successfully, since I was aware of the many things that could go wrong in these risky procedures, including excessive bleeding. Everyone on the operating team always seemed really tense and anxious, aware that something might go wrong at any time. As a result of repeatedly experiencing this tension during these surgical procedures when I rotated as an intern, I came to realize that surgery was not my calling. Besides the anxiety that accompanied each operation, I found the procedures too mechanical and bloody, and I realized that I much preferred the personal contact of getting to know the patients.
Nevertheless, though surgery was not for me, I was especially impressed by the skill of the doctors I assisted. They were just back from the war and had enormous experience with battleground casualties on the front. As a result, they could perform all types of surgeries other than brain surgery. At the time Germany had no antibiotics, so we had to be especially careful to keep the areas antiseptic where the doctors operated and the patients later recuperated in order to avoid any bacteria growing there. If it did, it could lead to infection. But by keeping everything clean and spotless, we were able to prevent any infections, and looking back, I’m surprised the doctors could do this, given the conditions at that time. Ironically, we even had a better record than the hospitals today with advanced antibiotics.
We were able to perform so well
because the head nurse thoroughly controlled the sterilization of the equipment and linen, as well as the hygiene of the nurses and doctors. She made sure they washed carefully and put on sterilized gowns and gloves before each operation and discarded them afterwards. Perhaps the only thing the head nurse didn’t control was whether the nurses and doctors had taken a shower, since she couldn’t step into the shower room with them. But with only a few exceptions, she watched over everyone and everything that went on in the hospital—from the nurses and patients to the orderlies and janitorial staff. Though the doctors were not under her direct control, she still watched over their activities, even though she could not comment on anything they did since they were her superiors. But except for the doctors, all the nurses and their helpers carefully followed her orders. Though the head nurse was a formidable and terrifying personality, she was extremely effective, so our hospital ran like clockwork. And even though she had called me out for trying to stoke a little rebellion among the nurses when I suggested that the Silesian nurse consider joining another order of nurses, I still admired her efficiency and effectiveness.
These experiences as an assistant in the hospital helped to affirm my decision to become a doctor. I worked there for several months and found this work a great experience because the surgeons and the internists helped us with their continued advice and support. At the same time, they introduced us to the practice of medicine by teaching us how to diagnose illnesses and treat patients.
Returning to School
From School to War: Growing Up in Hitler’s Germany (Contemporary Nonfiction) Page 15