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Most participating nurses escaped prosecution, although immediately after the war, some were convicted and executed for the mass killings of hundreds, even thousands, of people. In 1964, 14 nurses were tried for their crimes.

“They had 20 years to prepare defenses and had seen the Nuremberg trials outcome, yet half still didn’t see anything wrong with what they did,” Benedict says. “They were socialized to devalue the lives of certain people.”

Kindness amid the killing

Other nurses saw the evil, even from afar. After learning about Auschwitz, one Austrian nurse asked to work there, then aided the Resistance, obtaining food and medications while smuggling guns.

The Jewish nurses’ philosophy was diametrically opposed to the Nazi credo. Those who were concentration camp inmates, ordered to prevent typhus epidemics and identify the weak, struggled to alleviate suffering and save fellow prisoners’ lives. And those imprisoned amid the despair of the Warsaw ghetto provided both classes and care.

“Jews have a reverence for life, a belief that to save one life is as though you’ve saved the world,” says Susan Mayer, RN, PhD, nurse historian and director of ambulatory education at North Central Bronx Hospital, N.Y. “Life was the scourge of the ghetto. They were dealing with typhoid, starvation, gunshot wounds, and burns from the fires Nazis often started.”

Before the war, the 1,200-bed Jewish hospital was considered one of Warsaw’s best. Its three-floor nursing school used the 28-month New York State University nursing curriculum.

Moved to new quarters, “surgery, internal medicine, and a children’s hospital functioned even after the ghetto was closed to the outside in 1939,” Mayer says. “They were evicted a second time in 1942, and people were shot in their beds.”

Nurse-director Luba Bielicka-Blum accelerated classes and doubled their size, Mayer says. “Students were half-starved, and everyone had diarrhea, yet they managed to travel across the ghetto, providing care to patients — many of whom had typhoid — [and] showering patients and providing clean clothes. We don’t know how much medication couriers smuggled in, but they practiced injections, and [Bielicka-Blum] insisted they attend lectures. And they frantically tried to hide children in safety.”

The Nazi net drew tighter, and food scarcer. Struggling to eke out something useful from the horror, Jewish health providers studied the effects and progress of their own starvation. Their research is used today by universities.

Of the 110 ghetto-schooled nursing students, 44 graduated, Mayer says. Most students died with the ghetto.

Compassion or collaboration?

“Several hundred nurses committed murder in institutions,” says Cheyenne Martin, RN, PhD, associate professor in the Center for Ethics, Law and Policy, University of Texas Medical Branch School of Nursing, Galveston. “But many in occupied countries resisted, especially in France, where they hid Jews in hospitals, faked surgeries and records, and rescued children. Others established MASH-like surgical units in woods around Poland and Russia. They also became masters of misinformation,” faking deaths and forging death certificates.

“When I interviewed them, they were very reticent to call themselves heroes or extraordinary. They did it because it was the right thing to do,” Martin says. “Scholars see no clear, simple reason why they would become involved. It could be personal, helping family, friends, or neighbors. Or it could be that someone asked for immediate help.” Physicians and nurses had access to medications, copying machines, and connections to the broader non-Jewish society, all of which were critical to antiwar efforts.

Historically, nurses are either participants or targets, Martin says. “In every conflict, governments see them as collaborators to enfold for skills and leadership, or targets to slaughter, destroying the infrastructure and killing off health care to enemies,” she says.

In Germany, nurses were struggling for a professional identity and lacked a single, united association. “Hitler recognized the need for nurses to carry out policies, increase health and the birthrate, and rid society of the unwanted,” Martin says. “Nurses were given lots of promises about stature and money and a professional upgrade. They were sucked into the whole notion of ethnic cleansing and persuaded to override individual and professional ethics for the greater good of Germany.”