Growing up in her native Germany, Irma Geissler joined the German Red Cross when Adolph Hitler first ordered troops into Poland in 1939.
She was assigned to a hospital in Dresden which would become a major medical center for wounded and convalescing German military personnel being treated in 19 permanent facilities and many temporary aid stations.
For Irma, the war was endless shifts at the hospital, working to the point of exhaustion treating ever increasing numbers of wounded with fewer and fewer supplies.
It was a perilous time, during which she found she had much more to fear from her own SS government than any military attempting to defeat Germany. It was also the start of a curious journey during which she became a witness to history, hearing first hand the atrocities attributed to German leaders as a stenographer and interpreter at the Nuremberg trials.
She would later find romance with a young G. I. and start a new life in America that would eventually lead to the Doolittle Home in Foxboro where she resides today.
Irma’s father manufactured cast iron products and once the war started, he was told what to manufacture and in what quantities. Her uncle was in the clothing business. Quickly, he was manufacturing nothing but military uniforms and had high production quotas.
Her brother was a conscript in the German Army and there was no word from him as the war intensified.
On brief visits home, Irma would most often find her parent’s home filled with people she didn’t know. They were refugees from Poland and Eastern Germany who had fled in advance of Russian troops. In desperation, they went door to door, hoping someone would help, and many of them found food and shelter in the Geissler household.
“ People were more afraid of the Russian soldiers than anyone else,” said Irma, “because of the stories they had heard. They were terrible.”
Under attack
One day, as British and American planes were bombing Hamburg, some flew over and did not drop their bombs,” recalls Irma. “My father turned to me and said ‘Now it is our turn” and he was right. The bombers had a new target that night, the factories and railroad yards of Dresden.
“You could look up and see the planes regroup,” recalls Irma, then turn to release their bombs. “Oh, God, how terrible it was,” her voice trailing off to a whisper. The city burned for seven days and eight nights with a loss of 135,000 lives.
Nobody knew what was going on. There was no news, no radio and spies everywhere to check if anyone was listening.
“We worked around the clock at the hospital,” said Irma. “Weeks passed without ever going home. The Nazis wanted us to treat only soldiers, but I treated everybody.”
Needing more room for the injured, she opened the nearby school since there were no classes anyway. They cleaned out the gymnasium, emptied the halls and rooms and put straw on the floor. When they brought the wounded, they used stretchers to sleep on.
Grateful patient
Supplies were limited. One night, sitting outside the hospital were three or four soldiers. One was badly injured. “I had nothing to wrap him up with so I cut off a piece of my skirt to wrap his wounds.When she finished, the grateful man reached down into his waistband, removing a small cloth bag. It held a small porcelain pig with one leg already broken off. “This is my talisman from my mother,” he said. “It got me through the war, and I want you to have it. It will help you.”
Irma did make it through the war, but when it was over, there was nothing left. Everything around her had been destroyed
She learned her brother had been taken captive by the British and spent most of the war working on a farm. He was returned safely. But for Irma, there was nothing for her there on the blackened, pockmarked earth, shells of burned out buildings and questions as to the future of a defeated nation which had taken so much from her.
Hearing that German leaders would be held accountable for their crimes against humanity, she heeded the call for English-speaking stenographers and interpreters at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg where the trials would take place. She boldly set off on foot for the trials.
Justice at last
It was an arduous and dangerous journey, but Nuremberg held out the hope of security, a place to stay and earn her keep.
Her language skills were highly prized and she quickly found herself an eyewitness to history as the trial of the most notorious leaders of Nazi Germany were brought to justice.
“We worked in shifts, interpreting and recording the trail,” said Irma, often in a state of shock over what they were hearing, “then we would go off and transcribe the words.
“Such evil people, charged with such terrible crimes,” said Irma. “I did not feel like I belonged there, but they had to be brought to justice.”
She felt a great sense of loss that Hitler had taken his own life, but shed no tears when Hermann Goring was found guilty on all counts of crimes against humanity. He was the surviving leader and symbol of Nazism but even he escaped the hangman’s noose by taking his own life.
A new life
Following the trial Irma worked for the Criminal Investigation Department and would eventually meet a young American soldier named John Harrington. They married and had a son but they shared a dream of a new life in America. Irma said goodbye to her parents for what would prove to be the last time.
The marriage of Irma and John Harrington did not last. Irma raised her son until he became incurably ill at age 12 and died. Irma worked at Bentley College for many years, befriended by a young student who later became a faculty member. He was also the volunteer bookkeeper at Doolittle Home for more than two decades and when he could no longer provide all of Irma’s needs, he suggested she spend her remaining years at Doolittle Home.
Reliving her memories was difficult for Irma Geissler Harrington. Looking back on those events which changed the course of human history and so altered her own life, she was driven to make a public record of her experiences that we might never forget those terrible years. In words that were but a whisper, she spoke for the ages when she said: “It was so terrible. We can’t ever let this happen again.”
