In "Return from Tomorrow", Dr. Ritchie relates how, when the war in Europe had
just ended, his medical unit was ordered to a concentration camp near Wuppertal, Germany. It was a shattering experience to see the effects of slow starvation and to walk through barracks where thousands of men had died a little bit at a time. In spite of all the food and medicine rushed in at that time, many kept dying every day.
Ritchie was drawn to one Polish Jew who had obviously not been an inmate of the concentration camp very long. He was full of energy and people came to him with all sorts of problems. Even though he worked fifteen hours a day, he showed no sign of fatigue. He even seemed to gain strength.
One day, Ritchie was astounded to learn that the man had been in Wuppertal since 1939! For six years he had starved the same way, slept in the same airless and disease-ridden barracks as everyone else, yet without the least physical or mental deterioration.
This is the man’s story: “We lived in the Jewish section of Warsaw, my wife, our two daughters, and our three little boys. When the Germans reached our street they lined everyone against a wall and opened up with machine guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family, but because I spoke German they put me in a work group. I had to decide right then whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people’s minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life loving every person I came in contact with.”
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