I Remember Nothing More

I cannot make sense of the other review here. The title of the book is, "I remember nothing more: The Warsaw children's hospital and the Jewish resistence." The author, Szwajge, is an MD, not a nurse. It is no ot a pleasant read, made all the more difficult by the author's lack of a moral compass when it came to euthanasia and abortion.

The author's work as a nurse gave way to that of a courier girl during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. She mentions Schremf, who was Director of the German-run Department of Health of Warsaw. He was sadistic and brutal, and hated both Poles and Jews. (p. 33). Ironic to all those pronouncements about the Cross being absolutely foreign to Judaism, voiced during the Auschwitz Carmelite Convent controversy, Szwajger joined the ranks of Jews who appropriated Christian-suffering themes, in this case in the context of her work as a nurse: "And that this hospital was a Golgotha where the little Jesus of the ghetto was falling under the weight of his cross--the Jewish child, thrice innocent, suffering a thousand tortures." (p. 43). In common with many Jewish authors, Szwajger is preoccupied with Milosz's "Campo dei Fiori", and the merry-go-round just outside the burning Warsaw Ghetto. What she fails to mention is the fact that Jews also tried to enjoy themselves during periods of tragedy, and that such activities did not imply callousness towards the suffering. Szwajger puts the szmalcowniki (blackmailers of Jews) in the broader context of the overall criminality that had arisen in the Polish population (as a consequence of the brutality of the German occupation). She writes: "I told them honestly that I was afraid. Going home just before the curfew through the dark streets of Powisle wasn't safe. What I normally carried with me was too valuable to risk its being stolen. You have to remember that that on the streets there roamed, apart from the gendarmes and the extortionists, bands of young men completely corrupted by the war, preying on anybody, not just us. The words `Get out of your coat, Miss' were not uncommon, and you were rarely able to resist." (p. 123). After the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the ZOB (Z.O.B) fighters were evacuated into the forests near Warsaw, where some of them were killed under unclear circumstances. Apropos to this, the author makes some revealing comments: "But I know that apart from the partisans from the AL there were other groups fighting the Germans in the forest, such as the NSZ, the National Armed Force which was derived from the ONR, the Radical Nationalist Camp. They were part of the extreme right wing of the National Democratic Party, who before the war had been fascinated by fascism, and had shown an instinct for anti-Semitism. So when Jewish fighters were killed in the forests in skirmishes with people other than the Germans it was easy to conclude who else had been involved." (p. 94). It is obvious that NSZ responsibility for killing the forest Jews is not a fact, but an ideologically-driven ASSUMPTION. Clearly, Szwajger is confusing, and equating, political anti-Semitism with murderous anti-Semitism. [Finally, NSZ responsibility is a physical impossibility: They were never active in that part of Poland.]