By Roger A. Ritvo and Diane M. Plotkin. Sisters in Sorrow gives voice to the women who cared for the sick in the all-encompassing darkness of the Nazi extermination camps. Much has been written about Nazi doctors and those who worked with them, but almost nothing has been available about those who tried to heal and to give life and hope to the victims of the Holocaust. This book attempts to understand the survival skills and techniques used by women in adapting to a cruel environment.
Women seem to cope with such circumstances differently from men.
The women interviewed for this book exhibited extraordinary survival skills, which apparently arose from their experiences as homemakers, nurturers, and care givers. Despite their own suffering and humiliation, each of the women interviewed rose above her own personal hell to help others live, even though keeping them alive could and often did mean eventual extermination. Why these women did what they did and how they did it are at the core of their stories. The women's personal narratives are filled with medical accounts of illness, disease, healing, and death. We are witness to personal anguish, doubt, and the existential contradiction of keeping children alive so that they could work as slaves and, at the same time making sure they were unable to travel as long as possible, in the hope that their situation would change.