Today’s Blood-Covered Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On March 16, 1945, the Nazis liquidated the death camp at Spaichingen, located in southwestern Germany, about twenty miles north of the Swiss border. Joseph Freeman and thousands of other inmates began a six-week death march ordeal that ended in the city of Füssen in southern Germany. Joseph’s story is documented in the book The Road To Hell: Recollections of the Nazi Death March. The following is a brief excerpt from the book, discussing more than one month into the march.
In the weeks and days before the “Thousand Year Reich” was collapsing, we prisoners continued to agonize and to perish. As spring approached, the days grew warmer. We were barely surviving on a diet of grass, leaves and melted snow. I was dying piece by piece. The suffering of my fellow inmates was my suffering. I was not myself any longer. I was a part of a body of a hundred men, a collective body that was slowly expiring. Part of me was still living, but as inmates were dying with every passing hour, a part of me was dying too. It was a slow death. In a moment one can see the Angel of Death. This is the end. Humans die only once. I’m not human. I died a thousand times and I came back to life. Death was not an end to my suffering. I was death alive. There was no end to my agony.
In the last week of the death march we met a group of SS men escorting other inmates. We had no idea of where they came from. The SS from our group were engaged in an animated conversation with the SS escorting the other group. Then, after a while, the new group joined our column. As the two groups merged, we saw three trucks on the side of the road loaded with sacks of food. This was the price they had to pay to join our group. The SS from our group had made a good deal. They received a lot of food in exchange for a handful of new inmates to oversee. These new prisoners would be dead in a few days anyway. It looked as though the new group had been on the road for a long time. The new SS wore heavy, warm clothes: boots, fur coats, and raincoats with head covers. But their charges were poorly dressed and had no covers on their heads. Their faces were yellow. True, we looked repulsive, but the newcomers did not look any better, and the only difference being they did not smell as bad as we did.
That night the same scene repeated itself. We rested on frozen ground in an open field, surrounded by the well-fed SS. The smoke from their cigarettes and the smell of the vodka and pieces of salami drove some of the starving inmates crazy. Some could not take it anymore. They started to run and the SS sent the dogs after them. In just a few minutes we could hear the cries of the runaway prisoners. The barking of the dogs and the shouting of the SS still ring in my ears. Shouts rang out and then the silence. The SS returned with the dogs, who were covered in blood. Some of us quietly said Kaddish for those who had been killed. We could not sleep. I did not know how much longer we could go on.
The end was approaching for the last surviving inmates from Spaichingen. People were dying every day and night. The new SS men behaved more brutally than the former ones. If an inmate could not walk or fell down, he was immediately pulled from the line and shot. I felt I had reached my end. The pain and the inhumane conditions were catching up with me. I had lost so much weight I was reduced to skin and bones. When I received my ration it was very hard for me to reach my hand to my mouth to eat the little piece of bread. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. Inmates were lying and rolling on the ground with blood oozing from their mouths. The SS shot those who were laying down. This living Hell was an eternity.
A day later the new group joined us, the Unterscharfuehrer changed the routine. We rested during the day and marched in the evening. It appeared to me that we were avoiding villages and cities. Only one hundred and fifty inmates from Spaichingen Death Camp remained alive. During the four weeks of our forced march the SS had killed more than one thousand three hundred people.
Clandestine snapshot of a Nazi death march
Culled from: The Road To Hell
Malady Du Jour!
The Dr. Ikkaku Ochi Collection is a fascinating cluster of medical photographs from the late 19th and early 20th century that had been collected by Dr. Ikkaku Ochi in Japan and were found in a box many years later. There was no detailed information available for most of the photos, but the images are compelling because they show composed portraits of people suffering through intense pain caused by conditions that in most cases would be resolved through treatment today. There’s a sense of overwhelming sadness that comes through in these pictures, but also dignity and strength.
Looks like tertiary syphilis to me…
Garretdom: Sausage Poison Edition
A FAMILY POISONED.
Seven Persons Made Seriously Ill By Eating Impure Sausage.
The selling of impure meats resulted in the family of Thomas Fahy, living in the rear of 804 north Front street [Philadelphia], being made seriously ill yesterday afternoon by partaking of Bologna sausage purchased at a neighboring store. The housewife had prepared the noonday meal, and to make it more complete went to Whartman’s store, at Beach and Poplar streets, and bought a couple of pounds of Bologna sausage. Thomas Fahy, the head of the family, which consisted of himself, wife and four little Fahys, besides Margaret Cohen, who is stopping at the house, returned to his work after eating a hearty dinner, but complained of feeling unwell and went home. He had arrived but a few minutes when he was attacked with a violent fit of vomiting and retching pains in the stomach. Mrs. Fahy was taken sick with symptoms similar to those of her husband and Margaret Cohen, aged eighteen years, began vomiting up the poisonous substance, her condition becoming serious and exciting alarm. Thomas, aged seven years; Mamie, aged eight; Michael, aged ten, and Winnie, the youngest of the children, were all attacked with nausea and violent pains, but their condition is not considered as serious as the elder members of the family, they partaking but lightly of the impure sausage. The condition of the entire seven began to assume such alarming proportions that a messenger was sent to the office of Dr. Emil H. Herwig, at Third and Brown streets, who at once administered an antidote which afforded some relief to the sufferers. An investigation revealed the fact that the sudden illness was caused by “sausage poison,” induced by eating liberally of the meat which had become almost putrid. The children are recovering as rapidly as could be expected, and Mr. and Mrs. Fahy’s illness, thought serious, is not likely to result fatally. Margaret Cohen, who partook more liberally of the poisonous sausage than the others, is lying in a critical condition, and considerable apprehensions is felt regarding her recovery.
Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook
I tried to find out if the Fahys (and poor Margaret) all survived but struck out in my research.