Oral history

My father died about two and a bit years ago: he was 91. Although I had urged him to write about his experiences, he never really had the patience, and as a result much of the richness and variety of his experiences are now lost. Much as I was moved by Umberto Eco's depiction of the loss of knowledge when the monastery library burned, I am also perturbed that without some effort to record for future generations certain profound experiences, we will be collectively the poorer. Although no one reads this bolg (that's fine - my reason for writing it doesn't include seeking fame on the internet), I hope that in some way serves as a contribution to an electronic 'oral history'.

At the end of the war in Europe (WWII), my father led a small team of doctors from Britain back into Czechoslovakia. Since there was still fighting on the Eastern front, their route was strangely circuitous. One of the team's first tasks was go into the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin. The team had brought DDT, a pesticide that was in short supply in Europe. Their task was to rid the camp of potential carriers of disease.

My father was somewhat circumspect about what they found - they were the first people to enter the camp after the Nazi's left - but I do remember him recounting the unspeakable sight of mountainous piles of human bodies. The corpses were so emaciated they assumed all were dead, but to their horror, found that some (many) were actually alive. They spent several days sorting the dead from the living and spraying them with DDT. What happened after the first day or two, I'm not sure. My memory and my father's telling of the story (which I last heard perhaps 25 years ago) are unfortunately fading from memory.