Chapter VIII: Service in the Hospital in Hranice, Moravia
(Memories of Edith Stein)
Part 2
The hospitals in Bohemia and Moravia were mostly in the hands of German sisters. The hospitals were organized by an association of German nurses, and the Silesian Red Cross provided assistants. This was facilitated by a lady from Wroclaw, Miss Gertrude Stein. When I left on the train on April 7, 1915, at 6 in the morning, she came to the station, introduced me to two other assistants who had arrived from Saxony and were to travel with me to Hranice, and handed us our badges: an enamel brooch, a black ribbon with a red cross in the middle of a white field. Both companions from Saxony were young girls, one from a good middle-class family, the other a little simpler; both, if I remember correctly, were girls from households with no profession. Naturally, we all anxiously awaited our new field of activity. We reached our destination by noon. We took a carriage at the station and went to the hospital, which was located quite far outside the town. Hranice was a beautiful little town. In the marketplace, there were stone “arcades,” as I had known them from the old towns in Silesia and Bohemia; under the arches were merchant tables that had been set out from the shops. Our carriage stopped in front of the gate of a large building. Three large houses stood along the road, closely connected to each other. Walking along the entire facade took about ten minutes. In peacetime, there was a cavalry cadet school here, along with the building for officers and a higher secondary school. At the back were connected a large and a small riding hall. In addition, buildings had been newly constructed for the purposes of the hospital (I don’t remember exactly if there were 10 or 20). Each contained two halls for patients with fifty beds.
First, we were taken to the dining room and were served a hearty lunch. Most of the sisters were already eating; there were only a few latecomers. They asked us if we had brought any mail for them. Miss Stein had indeed given us letters to bring. We placed them on the piano, where the recipients searched for their own. It was common for the sisters traveling back and forth to carry letters, as many were lost or held for weeks in normal transit. However, it was strictly forbidden to bypass the censorship that existed between the allied states in this manner. But evidently, no one cared about this prohibition.
If I remember correctly, after lunch, we were assigned sleeping places. They called an assistant from the hallway to take me along. She showed me an empty bed in a large dormitory that I was to prepare. Additionally, in the few minutes she had for me, she told me that I would probably soon get angina, as every new arrival here got it at the start. It seemed unappealing to me to fall ill in this environment. Our perception improved when the head sister finally found time to welcome us. She called us into her office. It was a bright, large room, which, with its solid desk and flowers, looked just like in peacetime. Sister Margareta was small but strong, a bit over 30; her face beneath the white cap was kind and friendly, her nature simple, natural, and unassuming, yet firm and resolute. Before the war, she had been a sister in a land community in Silesia. Like most of the sisters here, she belonged to the organization of German nurses. She had established the hospital under difficult conditions with a minimal number of auxiliary personnel.
Even before she had the essentials at hand, the first transport of cholera patients arrived. Now she led a troop of 150 sisters and assistants, along with the difficult communication with the Czech director, doctors, and the military office. She found hardly any support from the local population, which was almost entirely Czech and hostile to Germans. When we asked someone on the street for directions in German, we did not receive an answer. Charitable donations from the local people reached the hospital very rarely because German sisters cared for the patients there. We were dependent on what we received from home. While we treated their wounded, the Hranice girls sat nicely dressed on the spa promenade at a concert.
Sister Margareta paused for a moment, considering where to send the new assistants. She assigned me to the typhoid ward. She called the large riding hall to announce my arrival. I don’t remember who led me there. We went to the gate to the courtyard and walked along the small riding hall to the large one. It was a single-story building, essentially just a more spacious house. To the left of the entrance door was a small room for the doctor who was on night duty. Behind that was a room for the sisters. On the right side were the bathroom and a small room where patients were placed who had to be isolated from others due to another infectious disease. Opposite the entrance were double doors leading to both front halls for patients. Behind them were two more halls, each with an office for the chief doctor and head nurse. Each hall also had a small kitchenette for tea. In both front halls lay 60 severely ill typhoid patients, and in the back halls 58. Recovering patients were transferred to the buildings. Each hall had its own doctor, two trained nurses, and two assistants; in addition, local girls for domestic work and one man from the home defense. The head of the entire typhoid department was Secret Councilor Boral, and the head sister was Sister Anna. They led me to the first hall where I was to work as an assistant and introduced me to the sisters.
(…) The sisters greeted me friendly. I received a white medical coat in addition to the nursing dress and white apron. We took it off when leaving the typhoid ward to minimize the spread of bacteria. In addition, there was a basin with a disinfectant solution in each hall. We dipped our hands into it after each contact with the patients. Disinfectants were generously used in other ways as well. Used laundry immediately went into large buckets with a lysol solution. Everyone was proud that very rarely did anyone in the house get infected. And it was said of the head sister that if she were to get infected, she wouldn’t die of typhus, but of shame. (…)
The second assistant in the department, Steffi, was also untrained. Compared to her, I had an advantage. But: our course lasted only a month, and then I practically worked for another six weeks. And that was already half a year ago. I had never seen a patient with typhus; I only knew the causes, symptoms, and course of the disease from our textbook. Naturally, I first had to get used to it, and I made some mistakes. I only remember one. When I walked through the hall, I saw a patient whose teeth were chattering with cold. I quickly filled a hot-water bottle and placed it at his feet. The patient even had to smile: he was lying in a cold wrap.
Sister Loni showed me around the entire hall after my arrival, showing me all the equipment and introducing me to the condition of the patients. She particularly pointed out the then most serious case among the patients. It was a young Italian merchant from Trieste. He was only referred to by his first name; I can’t recall the name, let’s say Mario. The disease had manifested in him with unusual severity. His mouth was constantly full of mucus, often mixed with blood. Sister Loni ordered me to clean his mouth with a swab every time I passed by. He always thanked me with his eyes for this merciful act. He could not speak at all; he had lost his voice completely. During each round, he was thoroughly examined. The doctor and the sisters spoke about him at his bedside as though he understood nothing. But I could see in his large, shining eyes that he was fully aware and listening intently to every word. Most of the other patients did not know themselves because of fever and were unaware of anything happening around them. We treated them as if they were small children and marveled when after weeks they came to themselves and behaved like normal people. In some, the typhus was already subsiding, but they still suffered from accompanying symptoms. The most common complications were pneumonia and pleuritis, which claimed more victims than typhus itself. Some came from the Carpathian front with frostbitten feet and had to be treated accordingly.
During our rounds through the hall, the doctor came for his visit and was introduced to me. He was still very young, small and stocky, with light hair and rosy cheeks. After a few friendly words, he stated, “Sister will be tired from the journey. We will excuse her for today.”
Meanwhile, in another hall, one case of spotted typhus had been identified. This was considered something very serious. The course generally ended in death, and the danger of infection was great; it was hardly possible to protect against it since the cause of the disease had not yet been discovered. The head sister issued a directive that the nurses in the typhoid ward should have as little contact as possible with others and should all sleep in the large riding hall. So I had to take my luggage back from the large hall, where I had placed it a few hours earlier. I found my way with difficulty in the expansive complex of buildings.
(…) I got along well with the sisters. They were skilled and diligent in their service, although it seemed that more ambition led them than love for humanity. It seemed they liked me. Every task they entrusted to me pleased me, and I was happy to step in for others when they needed help. It was firmly established that the four of us were to have alternating free time between lunch and coffee – at a time when there usually wasn’t much work to do. I didn’t care much for the free time; after all, I had come to work, not to take walks or sleep. But Sister Loni generally insisted that I also have time for rest. Gradually, I also realized that it was needed – to write letters, keep my things in order, take care of some trivialities in town, etc. However, when I saw that Steffi had a headache – which happened often – I requested permission to send her to bed and take her shift instead. She didn’t say much, but she was grateful that someone took care of her kindly. She was a homeless exile. When I frequently came into the hall with news of victories during the great German advance in Galicia, usually grinning with joy, she would say in her somewhat harsh German: “Oh Sister Edith, you always bring such good news.” Once I could also announce that her hometown Tarnow had been liberated from the Russians. My joyful news found less of a response among the soldiers. They shook their heads incredulously. They had experienced defeats and constant retreats and could not believe this turnaround. I was completely astonished by that.
I also worked well with Dr. Pick. He came from the Prague University Clinic, was an internist by profession, and wanted the same impeccable order in our hall as on his clinic. He was pleased with my interest in medicine and liked to give me informative lectures at the patients’ beds, as his chief did during a large visit. I also learned a lot practically from him. A pleasant discovery for him was that he could communicate with me as with a colleague – in Latin. However, the Latin, as those doctors spoke it, was truly barbaric.
(Edith Stein's Works VII, Editions Nauwelaerts – Louvain 1965, pp. 233–239, abbreviated.)
Selected and translated by Sister Petra of the Risen One, OCD.)
