Books that make me Weep
After Daybreak:The Liberation of Belsen 1945
quote:
By mid-May, a hospital office had been established and efforts to register the patients had begun....'On one occasion a nurse asked a patient to state her name, nationality and place of origin,' Annig Pfirter of the Swiss Red Cross recalled.
The woman did not know what to say; at last she pulled up the sleeve of her nightgown and stammered:
'Me...no name - only number - no country, just a Jewess, do you understand? I am only a dog.'
The nurse tried all means of obtaining the required information but in vain. All of a sudden the patient looked at her, gave a deep sigh and said with fervour:
'How I wish I were like you-a human being."
How moving, and a poignant reminder that it is all to easy to forget the individual suffering of those consumed by the Holocaust and to consider it only in academic terms.