User:Wainapel/sandbox

David Wainapel
David Wainapel MD. (Dawid Wajnapel in Polish language), Polish Jew and the holocaust survivor, 1907-1988 Radom, Poland, was graduated from medical school in Warsaw, one of the very few Jews to do so at that time. In 1943, he became an inmate in a relatively small concentration camp, where he also functioned, as much as was possible under the circumstances, as camp physician. During this time, his entire family, including parents and brother's Stanisław family were killed by the Nazis. Saba, who was already romantically involved with him, felt that after this terrible trauma he would lose his will to live, and she voluntarily entered the camp as an inmate, and also as a nurse. David was given a day off to go out and get married. So yes, their honeymoon was spent in the camp. Later they both were transferred to Auschwitz, and through a combination of fortitude, courage and sheer luck, they survived.

Before the David Wainapel had private clinic in Radomsko, Poland and was unmarried. At the time of the Nazi invasion in 1939 he joined his family that lived in Radom. The entire family like the rest of the Jews were forced by the Nazis to move to the small area of Ghetto. As a doctor he was running the hospital of the contagious diseases in the Ghetto. He met his future wife, Saba, while he was a doctor in this hospital in Poland where she joined him as chef nurse.

In 1943 he volunteered to work in the dispensary at a local concentration camp. While he was at the concentration camp, his entire family was murdered back in his native town Radom. Saba knew that once David heard of this he would be severely depressed and she wanted to be with him. Saba was single and a nurse. Under the rules of the Nazis, even though she was a Jew Saba had not been processed  through the selection. The only way the Nazis would permit Saba to go work with David was for her to marry him. So they got married and Saba was able to move to the concentration camp where she assisted David in the  dispensary.

She came to the concentration camp early as an act of love for David. Try to imagine that in those times. David Wainapel could not do much to alleviate suffering with the modest materials of  the dispensary. But, one of his actions stands out from his book. One day all of the inmates were in the central gathering space of the camp. The Nazi Commandant called David Wainapel forward and castigated him before everyone for the horrid state of the dispensary. The Camp Commandant told David Wainapel that if he did not have the dispensary completely cleaned and painted by the next day, the  Camp  Commandant would beat him to death. Please take a moment to imagine that scene. David Wainapel – a nonperson, with no rights and no recourse, at the complete mercy of the Commandant standing  there in front of all the inmates, the guards, the Nazis.

Certainly those who scoff would say that this was truly a situation that demonstrates  the limits of international law. What would you do if you had been him? David Wainapel stood there, looked the Commandant in the eye, let his pants fall to  the ground and said to the Commandant that the Commandant might as well beat  him to death right there and right then as he knew that the dispensary could  not be cleaned by the next day with what had been given to  him.

A stony silence crept across the gathered mass. David matched the Commandant’s stare and stood there, his pants by his feet, half-naked in the cold. After an eternity, the Commandant without a word turned around and walked away. Shortly thereafter, the Commandant ordered some meager materials be provided David so that he could attempt to disinfect the dispensary. No reprisals. Saba’s moving to a concentration camp as an act of love for David and David’ s enforcing his  own humanity in this modest way on an evil state always move me when I think  of them.

They both survived the war. They might not have had rights that a state would recognize or enforce, but they had rights that inured to their benefit as  human beings that they could assert and to which the state – no matter how  evil and no matter how reluctantly – acquiesced.