One day last fortnight, 5,000 wounded German soldiers arrived in Berlin from the Polish front. Only a handful of doctors and nurses were at the station to help them, and there were neither stretchers nor ambulances enough to go around. Aided by scores of “Hitler girls,” the bandaged men were bundled into busses, trucks and taxis, driven to hospitals already overcrowded.
Five days later, notices were posted at the German consulate in Antwerp, begging doctors “of German nationality regardless of race” to come home at once. The posters promised that, because of a serious shortage of physicians, all returning refugees would be immediately repatriated and paid back their confiscated fortunes to the last pfennig. To date, no answers have been received from the 3,000 Jewish doctors who escaped from the Reich.
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