War truly was hell for the victims of the Holocaust. This is the true story of Anna, a Holocaust survivor, who worked as a nurse in Poland's Tomaszow ghetto.

During the Holocaust, Anna said, people did what they had to do to survive. Some functioned without thinking. Others succumbed to illness and death. Still others, like Anna, reached out to help whomever they could.

Born in Rawa, Poland, in 1923, Anna moved along with her family to Tomaszow when she was young. She completed high school, where she sang in the choir, enjoyed drama, poetry, plays, and gymnastics, and was a member of the Red Cross and a Zionist organization. Her youth was happy and carefree until 1939, when the Nazis invaded Tomaszow. She was 16 years old.

The Nazis conscripted even children for menial labor. Anna's wealthy uncle was able to secure a job for her with the Gestapo, setting tables.

In December 1940, the Germans enclosed Tomaszow as a ghetto and converted the school into a hospital that housed hundreds of patients. The entire hospital staff was Jewish.The Gestapo assigned Anna to the hospital as a student nurse, and she wore a white uniform with big pockets that her mother washed daily because of the lice and rampant disease.

Doing with nothing

The Nazis didn't give the hospital any supplies, so Anna and two other nurses worked long hours without towels, linens, or bandages. Anna recalled that there was little food or drink for the patients and staff, and few, if any, drugs to distribute.

The doctor performed procedures and treatments under filthy conditions, and he operated with only a knife because the Nazis had confiscated his surgical instruments. Without anesthesia or antibiotics, infection and death were common. Patients also endured unsanitary conditions and suffered from infections, dysentery, dehydration, and typhus. Anna herself contracted typhus and was treated for a month.

Anna worked in the hospital until October 1942, when the Nazis deported most of Tomaszow's people to the Treblinka death camp. Anna's mother and brothers were among those sent to Treblinka, and they died there.

Anna stayed at Tomaszow until the ghetto was liquidated in May 1943. She was taken to the Pionki labor camp, then to Auschwitz, to Bomlitz, Germany, and, toward the end of the war, to Berlin. Anna escaped during Allied bombing with a group of girls and hid in a barn near the city, where she finally was liberated by the Russian army.

Witnessing to history

After the war, Anna returned to Poland, married, and gave birth to a daughter. Her new family emigrated to the United States in 1949.

Although she never returned to nursing, Anna has been active in a Holocaust survivors' club. She tells her story before live audiences and on videotape so that future generations will know what happened.

Anna does not consider her work as a nurse in the wartime ghetto anything out of the ordinary. "Somehow, we managed," she said humbly.

The author, LENORE B. WEINSTEIN, RN, BS, MA, is adjunct associate professor (clinical) at Marquette University School of Dentistry, Div. of Public Health, Milwaukee, WI, and a Certified Interviewer for the Holocaust Documentary and Education Center, Inc., Hollywood, FL.