Tag #134842 - Interview #78170 (artur radvansky)

The chief of the hospital in Buchenwald was a locksmith, and an exceptional young Communist, Walter Krämer. In 1933 they had thrown him in jail as a Communist; there he learned to do surgery. He was an excellent surgeon and gradually worked his way up from nurse in prison hospitals to the position of chief of the hospital in Buchenwald, where he arrived in 1937. And Walter Krämer convinced the SS that even as chief of the hospital he can't guarantee that the infections from our camp won't make their way via ground water into their camp. God only knows why they didn't shoot us all back then. Out of 3,800 prisoners around 300 of us remained. I was emaciated, just skin and bones, bugged-out eyes. At the time, with my height of 175 cm I weighed only 30 kilos. I couldn't lift my feet or get up on a chair. Our clothing was in tatters, only the shoes lasted, but were leaky. We all had frostbite. And in this situation one day arrived Walter Krämer with nurses and took care of what they could.