A patient, an old woman with white hair, stripped of speech by dementia, followed us each shift, staying an inch behind, wanting nothing more than human presence. We let her into the staff room, where she hovered behind whoever was nearest, her tattooed number visible on her forearm.

They found a young girl, Doris, who could speak some English. Malnutrition had left her mouth and face gangrenous

I am aware of only one other patient, these past thirty years, who had survived the Nazi death camps. Normally sane and sensible, dusk brought confusion, dragging him backwards in time. Each sundown he began screaming and we could not console him; he took us for guards. I drugged him.

Clive James, wary of easy comforts, said the true story of the Holocaust – which is remembered on Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow – was not about the Jews who survived. Hollywood prefers happy endings and James was writing about Schindler’s List. A friend from an older generation, Alex Paton, was there in the aftermath and kept diaries.

‘In spite of Home Guard and treating the casualties of the London blitz,’ he wrote, ‘we medical students were conscious of our privileged position’. In 1945, aged twenty-one, he seized the opportunity to cross to the continent. Students were being recruited to help treat the victims of famine. Refeeding someone........

© The Spectator