Witness To History Remembers Painful Past
By: Import User
Updated: January 7, 2009
One hundred years ago, writer George Santayana issued a famous warning: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemnded to repeat it."
Today, an 80 year-old woman lives by that saying as she travels the world to remind people of one of the most brutal chapters in modern world history.
At the time of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Vivien Spitz was only 22 years-old. She served as a court reporter, taking down every word of testimony and watching the doctors who she says "became torturers and murderers." The details of those war crimes, she says, were truly unbelievable. "I would have tears coming out of my eyes, falling on my notebook with the ink running," she remembers.
Spitz wants to make sure those memories do not die, so she is lecturing around the country. She has also written a book about her Nuremberg experience: "Doctors From Hell- The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans."
