Peter Saraphis

4/3/14
English 1102
Nurses Involvement in the Holocaust
When I began inquiring about nurses involvement with the holocaust I was not sure what
I was going to find. I was not even sure I was going to find any at because I did not if there were
any records about nurses. Since I did not where to start I thought I would start by looking into
what Nazi nurses and Allied nurses did during the Holocaust. I also wanted to know if the
Holocaust had an impact on the modern nursing field today because I hope to become a nurse. I
found that the role of the Nazi nurses of Germany was what I know nurses do but some of these
nurses also did things that were so horrific that it makes me almost ashamed of wanting to be a
nurse. The role of the Allied nurses in the Holocaust was to heal the people that survived the evil
of Nazi concentration camps which I learned from reading personal accounts of army nurses in
World War II. I learned that todays nurses are still needed in the care of Holocaust survivors.
The information I found on the involvement of nurses in the Holocaust was both difficult and
extremely interesting to learn about as an aspiring nurse.
I discovered that the nurses in Nazi Germany did the job of caring and healing in tough
wartime conditions just like nurses are supposed to but as I continued to read I found out that
some of the Nazi nurses also did terrible things like killing innocent babies and preforming
terrible medical experiments on people. Not much is known about these nurses but what is
known is very disturbing. I know that there were terrible medical experiments during the
holocaust but I did not know that nurses directly had a hand in them. The Nazi nurses assisted
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with Hitlers super race children experiments.
The name of the super race children experiments
was called The Lebensborn Program, ordered by
Heinrich Himmler, and the goal was to breed an
elite race of pure Aryans to lead the Third Reich
(Reporter). The nurses assisted the scientist in
the experiments by doing harmful things to
children which is the opposite of what a nurse is
supposed to do. The Nazi nurses put children
under UV lights to try to make their hair lighter
with the goal of making them more like the
Aryan standard (Reporter).The nurses in the
photograph are putting children under the UV lamp during an experiment. The Nazi nurses not
only assisted in disturbing medical experiments but also killed newborn babies. One survivor
talks about a German nurse she witnessed throwing toddlers into gas chambers (Newman).
Although the Nazi nurses killed and basically tortured children some did the things nurses are
supposed to do. A nurse that assisted in Nazi experiments gave a man a non-harmful injection
instead of what the doctor in charge ordered her to do (Newman). She took the responsibility of a
real nurse and helped the man. Some Nazi nurses did what they were trained to do and others
were involved with the tragic event that was the Holocaust.
When I started my inquiry on the involvement of the Nazi nurses I was worried about
what I was going to read. I thought I was going to find only bad information about the nurses
from Nazi Germany. I have learned about the evils of the Holocaust before and was expecting to
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find information that would make people view nurses negatively. It surprised me to read that
most of the Nazi nurses actually what a nurse is expected to do. The other ones made all nurses
look bad by their actions in the Holocaust. I want to be a nurse to help people and I believe that it
is what the profession is all about so I found it hard to believe that a nurse could hurt people.
Even if they were under orders some Nazi nurses still found ways to do what was right. A nurse
should help people no matter what the circumstance because it is their responsibility.
Soldiers and Nurses of Nazi Germany
As I moved forward with my inquiry I looked into how an Allied nurse was involved in
the Holocaust. I found articles about two women who were army nurses who not only helped the
soldiers but were some of the first people to go to the concentration camps after they had been
liberated. Their stories are very sad but inspiring to nurses. Maeceille Beem was in the one of the
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first nursing units who went to concentration camp near Halberstadt, Germany. Maerceille would
rather talk about her nursing work for the soldiers because of what she witnessed in the camp.
She said that she did not know anything about the genocide before she
arrived to the concentration camp. When she got there Beem said it
was so hard to tell the living from the dead (White). The survivors
were so skinny that it was hard to put for the nurses to put an IV in
them. Many of the ones who survived still died after their first bite of
breed (White). The other Army nurse, Charlotte Chaney, did not have
an experience that was much different. Charlotte was in the first
contingent of medics to go into Dachau after it was liberated in
April, 1945 (Stein). Charlotte said ``we could not believe what we
saw as they say, it was like throwing open the gates of hell (Stein). The nurses were to care for
the people in the camps. They could not even feed starving survivors right away because there
digestive system could not handle it. The nurses used the barracks for months saving and healing
the victims (Stein). These to women probably had to do the hardest job a nurse would ever have
to do. They not only went all over Europe and cared for the soldiers but had to care for people
who survived the hell of a concentration camp.
During my research of Allied nurses I found out what I thought I was going to find. I
figured that the nurses involved in the holocaust would be army nurses who cared for the army
and then after it was over cared for the survivors. What was surprised was the way they
described the camp being the first people in. It is very sad to her about these people but inspiring
because the nurses were there to help them. It was also interesting to learn what they did when
they got to camp and the difficulties they had because of the survivors conditions. The allied
Army Nurse- Maeceille Beem
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nurses did an amazing thing helping people that were put through the worst thin imaginable and
it gives me inspiration to help people as a nurse.
After completing the research to my inquiry of nurses involvement in the
Holocaust I know more about the history of nursing which I did not really know anything about
before looking into what nurses had to do with the Holocaust. I now know what involvement of
different nurses in the Holocaust. Some of them did evil terrible things that were the opposite of
what nurses are trained to do. Most of the nurses though helped and cared for the victims of the
Holocaust. I even found out that nurses still are having a major role in caring for survivors. As
the survivors grow older they need more and more nursing care which is making nurses
increasingly urgent (Leonhard). After I become a nurse I could work with specifically holocaust
survivors which would be very cool. I did not know before my inquiry that I could still help
people from the holocaust. Learning about nursing gets me excited to become one because I
learned how most of the nurses in the Holocaust helped people and helping people is the reason I
am going to be a nurse.







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Works Cited
Leonhard. "Nursing care for elderly Holocaust survivors. Experiences of Israeli nurses as related
to their own life stories." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National
Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2014. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/126
Newman, Brandi . "Holocaust Essays: The Doctors of the Holocaust." Holocaust Essays: The
Doctors of the Holocaust. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.
<http://remember.org/imagine/doctors.html
Stein, Gary. "Army Nurse Shares Story Of Holocaust." Sun Sentinel. N.p., 25 Apr. 1993. Web. 3
Apr. 2014. <http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1993-04-25/news/9302070990_1_holocaust-
survivor-concentration-camp-nurse>.
White , Ronnie . "Army nurse haunted by Holocaust horrors." AL.com. N.p., 29 Apr. 2007. Web.
3 Apr. 2014. <http://blog.al.com/ht/2007/04/army_nur
Reporter, Daily. "The nurses behind the Nazi 'Super Race Children': Inside the Aryan breeding
wards where boys and girls were given UV treatment if their hair turned brown." Mail
Online. Associated Newspapers, 17 Jan. 2013. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261601/Nazi-nurses-helped-breed-Super-
Race-Children.html>.