One of the more harrowing scenes in Band of Brothers, based ofc on reality, was when Easy Company liberated a small camp. The guy who could speak German (and Yiddish) was told he had to tell the prisoners they had to be put back into the barracks and they had to guard the food from them.
And it's explained to him, by the medical staff that showed up THAT THEY HAVE SEEN THIS BEFORE. AND...that feeding the starving would kill them. Their systems had shut down, and many didn't have enough calories to process food anymore and so would die from eating.
Others had diseases like typhus, which if they were given unfettered food/water access would cause them to crash and die. The show depicts him sobbing as he's yelling to the prisoners they ARE safe and ARE liberated, but have to be locked back up for safety. Christ it makes me cry now even
Anyway they didn't have magic peanut butter then, so it was water gruel to slowly build people up so they could eat again, as well as intensive medical care. And still many died. And that hurts so much, to imagine people surviving the worst shit other humans can do, and die being saved.
My grandfather's brother had that happen to him as well. He was at the liberation of buchenwald and spoke fluent Yiddish. Later in life he allowed someone to record his stories. The pain to hear him tell it 50 years later is staggering.
💕
Refeeding syndrome People inadvertently killed the ones they were desperately trying to help because they didn’t know how to help them safely or that just giving people calorific food was unsafe for them
And ofc it makes sense that you'd want to feed someone starving, it's the worst in that helping you're harming
I carry this word in my head as a dialect word, pap is mush or gruel for babies and infants, but babies died if they only got that and that is why it is also a word for something useless or that seems nourishing but isn’t Definition 1 v 3
The kids with dark brown or black hair but it is going red and brittle man, I know what that is Also the young men whose knees seem wider than their upper thighs, you can see even though they are wearing jeans It is on the TV but people don’t seem to recognise it for what it is
Joe Liebgott. Not surprising that when the war ended he disappeared for three years, never contacting his family.
I cried a lot at that series, but that scene was gut wrenching.
I did like when that rich lady had to go to the camp that made me happy
Dig, bitch.
I like the frankly brutal realness (and the horrors it conveys) of the series (as well as Saving Private Ryan) but that was an episode where I was feeling squeamish and even my Dad (normally super stoic) was "I need to take a break from this show"
My husband will re-watch it, but I can't. Once was enough.