September 22, 2002
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The Globe and Mail: The return of the Auschwitz nightmare
During the Second World War, Hitler killed off the very young and very old, saving the fittest … for slave labour. Now, 60 years after the first Jews were shipped to concentration camps, the survivors are in their 70s, 80s and 90s.
At Baycrest’s Apotex Centre, Jewish Home for the Aged in Toronto, 50 per cent of patients with dementia are Holocaust survivors for whom the loss of short-term memory condemns them, once again, to the death camps.
Wow, this story broke my heart. Some of the anecdotes are unbelievable.
Like Mrs. Vilenski, whose infant daughter starved to death, many here cannot adjust to abundance. …
“Hoarding is a real issue,” Dr. Gordon said. “They will always take what’s left over and put in the drawer. The cockroaches love it, it smells, but confrontation doesn’t get you anywhere. You just say: Check Mrs. Greenberg’s bedside table for bagels.”
As a result, the clinic has to be very careful:
[T]he dental clinic has no gas. No one lines up for flu shots. At night, the staff avoids using flashlights. And one administrator with a brisk, efficient walk and a penchant for block-heeled shoes stopped wearing them after one patient mistook her for a Nazi.
I can’t imagine anything worse than surviving the Holocaust… only to relive the memory day after day:
[Mrs. Vilenski] asks, over and over again, if her brothers and sisters and cousins are alive.
With one exception, every member of her family perished in the Holocaust, not just her husband and their daughter, but her parents, all her cousins and four of her five siblings.
Comments (14)
That’s horrible… Especially that last one. How can anyone respond to that? What could anyone say?
Thats one of the most awful things I have ever heard.
Wow. I never would have thought about that. What a horror to have to relive.
I grew up in Germany, and the memories there are still strong. And this applies to both, those that have suffered and those that were loyal to the dictator. In school, they hammered the holocaust into our minds, reminding us almost daily how bad we were, and how horrible our crimes were. When you visit another European country as a German, people have instant reservations against you. The French and British usually hate you, and they let you know. The past is still fresh.
I have been to Dachau and have seen the remainder of the camp there. Words cannot describe the horror people went through in those camps.
Thank you for reminding us.
yeah andy, the japanese weren’t exactly good neighbors either. i know a lot of koreans and chinese who hate all japanese.
oh well, all we can do is try to be better people. what amazed me about this story is that i had thought so much of this was in the past… but for many alzheimer’s patients, it’s very much their present. horrifying…
That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.
The past can not be changed. And so much of what so many think is the past because of a simple timeline, is still present for anyone having experienced it or even anyone who knows someone who did. Nothing dies. Things do fade eventually. But its like ripples in the sand, there is always some residual effect somewhere, even if we are unaware. Just be sensitive to life. And most of all sensitive to others.
-Laura
PS: I worked in a nursing home. And I can tell you, experiencing the Holocaust must have been a life altering experience. But the experiences that every individual sorts through day to day can turn into the same living nightmare through dementia,lonliness, fear, mistreatment, and lack of love.
I, for one, know we should never forget– even after there are no more survivors left living among us. I want to be one of the ones who remember their memories despite those remembrances being so painfully heart-rending.
How very disturbing and upsetting.
Those poor, poor people. sigh… Sometimes life is so friggin unfair. We bitch and moan about so many things… but really.. compared to what they have been through.. and are going through again, well.. we can’t really complain much.
horrible.
Imagine what life would be like for them if they were in a nursing home that was not sensitve to the horrors of their past?
pete