When my mother bought me this blank book, she expected me to write down my inner most thoughts, to confide in you, so decades down the line I could look back and gander with amazement at my idiotic musings. Well, this is my first time ever writing in you, and most definitely my last. Actually...this is probably my last time writing anything. Ever. It’s too late for regret or remorse; the white powder, whatever it is, has already begun working. My hands are shaking as I write this, partly from the poison that is slowly coursing through my veins and taking over me, and partly from the power of the words I write. What I write I must hide, for if these words are discovered, peril will come to many. But I must write these words so that someday someone will know the truth, that I’m not the heathen I’m accused to be but the savior.


Going into nursing was my father’s idea. Not to say I was adamantly against it; I had always enjoyed the sciences. But I never felt that I had any impact. I was a midwife, though trained as a surgeon’s assistant and felt I could do so much more to help people. In 1939, I had my chance. The war came swiftly and silently, and I for one, a politically naïve twenty-one-year-old hadn’t expected it. But finally I, a lowly midwife, was needed to help nurse the thousands of weak and sickly heroes coming back from the front lines. Never in my life had I felt more exhilarated.


This exhilaration didn’t last for long. Probably a year or so after, Denmark fell to that scum, the Nazis. I had to watch them cart away so many I held dear, while I was safe because I was the “physical Ideal” of Nazi Germany. I would have done almost anything to trade in the long blond hair and blue eyes I once held dear for ebony pupils and locks. Instead, I, and many other young nurses, was told to report to a concentration camp, not as inmates but as nurses. At first we were all ecstatic; we could help care for all the mistreated inhabitants of those dreadful holes. But we soon learned that we wouldn’t be part of the solution but the problem. We were to perform dreadful, inhumane experiments on children. I was so close, the day I learned my duties, to just attacking a Nazi officer, jumping off a high building, anything to escape what I had to do. But I didn’t yet have the nerve I have now. I hadn’t yet seen evil. Instead I acted like a dim-wit my first day on the job and was assigned to clean the “hospital” while all the others were forced to be the monster in all the children’s nightmares.


I was probably the first to take a child home with me from the camp, but the other nurses soon followed my lead. Whenever a family entered the camp, they were almost immediately split-up. The children subjected to these experiments were allowed to have a parent drop them off, but it was more or less understood they would never see each other again. One day I, while mopping the disgusting bloody floor, recognized the baker from my old village, and her baby, Betty, whom I delivered. She was hiding behind a doorway, and doing a poor job of it.


After looking down the hall, I sprinted to her side. What I didn’t see was that she held a knife and almost stabbed me, but I sidestepped just in time. After recognizing me she returned her knife to her side and her lips to her baby’s cheek. Her eyes began bleeding the salt of the soul. I sat down in the dimly lit hallway and wrapped her in my embrace. No words needed to be spoken. I understood. Betty was going to be used for an experiment of some sort. Her desperate mother had done her best to hide, and was ready to fight until the death for her last link to normality, her daughter. Suddenly, I came up with an idea.

“Marilyn,” I spoke softly, “I’m so sorry to rush you, but we must act fast. The night guard will walk this corridor in only minutes. I return to the city each evening. Let…let me take Betty. I’ll sneak her out after my shift,” I pleaded.

Marilyn faltered, torn between her desire to see Betty be safe and her immense hatred of the idea the two of them be separate, “No. You wear the Nazi uniform. You are no better than the rest. You’ll do those…things to her the same as anyone else.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, hurt and distraught by her comment, “I might wear the uniform, Marilyn, but I’m still the same little girl who used to buy pastries from you and would sing in church choir and was scared to walk home from school by myself. I would never hurt Betty. Please, let me take her. I’m not guaranteeing I’ll get her out, but I’m giving her a chance she won’t get when they catch you hiding here and take Betty away,” I argued.


Marilyn handed Betty over to me slowly, carefully, almost as if she moved too fast I would retract my offer. She kissed Betty one more time and reached into her sock and handed me all the money she had hidden. She begged me to take care of her before I shooed her in the other direction. I ran quickly for the supply closet where all the nurses kept their things. I gave a bit of a sleep-inducing drug to Betty before slipping her into my lunch sac and carrying her home. I gave Betty to my neighbors, where I knew she would be safe. After her, there were at least twenty three I alone rescued, though the amount of children saved by all the nurses on my shift is uncountable.


But about a week or so ago, records were checked, and it came to pass that at least one hundred children were missing from the test site. We were able to fabricate records and make it look like most of them had just died like they were intended to, but it was impossible to cover up all the disappearances. The head of the hospital has decided to kill all the employees, some of whom have husbands, wives and children, unless someone steps forward. That someone is me. About twenty minutes ago, the head of the hospital received a note from yours truly stating I was the sole savior of the children and blamed all the disappearances on me. The soldiers will come soon, within minutes I expect and arrest me, torture me, until I reveal the whereabouts of the children. But I’m not giving them the satisfaction. My heart is now feeling heavy, and each breath itself a task-the end is near. And here I shall conclude my letter, so I can conceal it before I meet my maker. And I can meet my maker knowing that I’m the savior, not a heathen even if the hallowed halls of history paint me as no more then a torturer of the meek.