Summary

Chapter One: The Small Voice from Then

Edith Hahn, a young Austrian girl, worked as a nurse’s aide with the Red Cross at the Stadtische Krankenhaus in Brandenburg in the ward for foreign workers and prisoners of war. Edith estimated that there were more than ten thousand foreign prisoners in Brandenburg. They worked in the factories and were sent to the hospital when they were injured or fell ill. “They were a slave population, conquered and helpless.”

Economic conditions were in a downward spiral in Germany. Some of the nurses stole food for their starving patients but most stole food for themselves and their families. Edith, who was known as Grete during that time, was engaged to a German man named Werner who had joined the Nazi Party. On one occasion, Grete was assigned to take care of a stroke victim, a...