Posted on 04/28/2012 1:09:11 PM PDT by wagglebee
The work of Nazi doctors is a well-documented lesson in medical ethics. There was even a separate trial for them at Nuremberg and seven were hanged. But what about the nurses who assisted them? Their role has been airbrushed from history, says an Australian academic. Professor Linda Shields, of Curtin University, expressed her concerns in Nursing Review three weeks ago. “There has been a great deal of scholarship on the role of doctors and what they did in Nazi-occupied Europe, what has been neglected or overlooked is the role of nurses,” Shields said. “And yet most of the killings that we are looking at occurred in hospitals where nurses made up the bulk of the workforce. Nurses were very much involved in the killings and the camp experiments,” she said.
Survivor testimonies and available documents state that nurses actively and voluntarily participated in Nazi euthanasia programs, killing over 10,000 people, many of them children. Some estimates are as high as 30,000 victims. While it is impossible to find exact figures on the number of nurses involved - as most of the information was destroyed after the war - Shields says it was a minority of nurses but most have not been held to account for their crimes.
“The bulk of nurses working in Nazi-occupied Europe cared for their patients appropriately, but there were a handful of nurses who chose, and the word is chose, to follow the regime that declared that some of their patients should be killed. These nurses were not forced to do it. The nurses who did these things did them of their own free will,” says Shields, whose historical research into the Nazi era has earned her a place in an international nursing hall of fame, which she will formally receive in August.
Many nurses were allowed to relocate to other hospitals because they disagreed with the objectives of the programs, records state. “There is no record of anyone being sent to a concentration camp. There is no record of anyone losing their job over refusing to participate in the sterilisation or euthanasia programs,” Shields says. She and fellow researcher Dr Susan Benedict will publish a book of their research later this year. ~ Nursing Review, Apr 3
Thank you.
So true. So scary.
Recently speaking to healthcare workers and pointed out some of these facts that they are complicit with leftist policies that harm helpless mentally ill and mentally retarded patients. They initially denied it, but eventually stopped and agreed although it made them very uncomfortable to realize that their is not much difference in the blind following of leftist laws and what the German docs and nurses were doing in the thirties.
Matter of degrees.
Well said!
The same is true with abortion. The names of at least some abotionists have become infamous. But the nurses who help them with their killinhgs remain largely anonymous.
Many years ago when he was an up and coming news reporter a very young Geraldo Rivera did a news story about these kind of “hospitals”. Geraldo’s news camera had caught some very disturbing images. It was because of this story that the state closed this hospital and others followed as well. It was decided that the mentally retarded (for which this was a warehouse for) would be better in homes even if with foster families.
I personally don’t know which is better but I do know that after seeing the news article that we should never go back to that. The staff either did not care or pardon the pun, were just retarded themselves and could not care for these people. Most animal shelters would not have gotten away with the crap they pulled.
I agree that there were bad places. And there were good places. There are always bad apples. But I can tell you that isolated usually rural foster homes were no picnic either for some people.
I postulate that more people are hurt by today’s system than ever were hurt by the previous system.
A custodial system with the safeguards that forty years of new experiences would be better IMHO than what we have now.
I don’t see that the point of the research or the article is to denounce any particular nurses in the past, but to learn that it can happen again. Fore warned is fore armed.
That makes it sound like the Nazis allowed something like a "conscience clause", a practice our home grown anti-Lifers won't permit.
Rather disquieting to think Hitler could be more humane than Obozo.
Interesting (and scary).
Excellent points.
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Exactly right.
“My father and his family were in one of Hitler’s camps, and many of my relatives were murdered by cruel doctors/nurses in Siberian concentration camps”
I am sorry.
Remember that famous test years ago wherein volunteers were to push buttons that supposedly caused other volunteers to experience pain? And they could hear the other “volunteers” screaming in pain, and still pushed the buttons?
Of course the “volunteers” experiencing pain were not volunteers at all, the only subjects were the button pushers.
Many people will do horrific things if they are told to do so by “authorities”. It takes strong moral courage to stand up against authority. This is something not valued in our current debased and debauched and greed driven society. We will see very bad results, even more than we see now, I am afraid.
Recently had 56yrto old RN tell me that she will need to get a bachelors degree within the next 4 to 5the years or????. Her years of experience will mean nothing. She cannot afford to pay for the degree work and will retire instead. I can only imagine the focus of the ‘degree’ courses required for these RNs. Go along to get along OR Get OUT of the system. Nurse anesthetist will be in training for 2 additional years. Pharmacists may require doctorates. The indoctrination and federalization of medical care is here NOW.
Oh, combat_boots, that is so very nice, thank you. No one dwells on it, and my parents (and my grandparents, I still have one grandmother who’s alive) have basically never talked about it in my 40+ years on earth.
I do try to talk to other family friends and more recent emigres to find out what exactly went on under Stalinist and Hitler’s rule, although I don’t want to dwell on it too long either.
What scares me the most is that my parents are seeing this happening all over again. No matter that a relatively small group of people remember what happened 70+ years ago, history’s being repeated. That’s why I feel we must spend our energy on here and now and the future. It feels like we are on an unchangeable course, but I like to believe that we can still make a difference. That we won’t look back, or our children look back, and wonder why relatively few fought back.
A lot of the things that were going on then during war (restrictions on travel, people were all considered lawbreakers because so many new laws were in place, a disregard for human life, no fair trials, so on) are deja vu to too many!
But if you recall, Americans went to the polls on November 4, 2008 to choose who they wished to lead them. And the majority choose degenerates when given the option. We will in the near future begin to reap the seeds that were so gladly, gleefully, and so orgasmically pleasurefully sowed on that day. And the harvest is going to be bitter, very bitter.
Florence Nightmare
speaking of Nazis, a movie to watch for is “Iron Sky” (In 2018 Nazis are discovered living on the moon, ready to attack earth). trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_IndUbcxc
The US president is Palin-esque.
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