The Resident

I am a retired nurse and I started my training in a nursing home. We are taught to make sound judgements about the residents and to problem solve. The reason the people who live there are called residents and not patients is that the people reside in the facility.1

We took care of each person and in their daily needs for living and among them was a rather frail lady in her eighties, that seemed to be such a mild person ,that what happened to us when we took her for a bath belied what she did. The charge nurse chose four of us to take her in the gerichair to the showers and she made a curious remark as we headed for her room.2

Mrs. A is what I shall name her changed from a mild mannered lady and into a banshee when we got her out of bed and put her in that chair. Now she had not minded that we changed her and took out a towel. But when she found out that she was headed for the shower she cursed us and fought harder than any wildcat. She grabbed me by my throat and started to scream at me. "No you are bull, murder, I am being murdered."3

Well that startled us and we finally got her down the hall and into the showers. One of the student nurses notice a tattoo on her hand. It was the Star of David and a number. So while we were thinking on that it happened that our instructor came by.4

She saw that we were scratched up and bruised and that Mrs. A was very agitated and we told her that she did this only when going to the shower.5

So we rolled her out of the shower and back to the charge nurse's desk. She wanted to say something but the instructor asked for her records.6

To our horror we found out that she was a survivor of the death camps in Germany and going to the shower held such ghastly memories. It was then logged into her records that we were to give her a tub bath or bed bath but we were to never take her to the showers again.7

They also chastised the charge nurse for failing to solve this problem, but the dear lady died peacefully in her sleep at the nursing home.8

People cannot comprehend what this horrific event in our history did to the Jewish people. I never again looked at the Jewish people in the same light and I am a Christian. May we never do to another human being what was done in the Holocaust. Shalom to you all.9