“You’re Still Nurses” — German Female POWs Shocked by How Canadians Treated Them

“You’re Still Nurses” — German Female POWs Shocked by How Canadians Treated Them

April 16th, 1945, Northwest Germany

The sun came up at 6:47 in the morning, but Margarete Hoffmann did not feel any warmth. She stood in the field hospital near the town of Oldenburg and watched Canadian soldiers surround the building. Inside were 147 wounded German soldiers who could not walk or fight, along with 31 medical workers: 27 women and four elderly doctors.

Margarete was the head nurse. She was 34 years old and had worked as a military nurse for 12 years. She believed everything the Nazi party told her. For months, the German army had warned the nurses about what would happen if the enemy caught them. Propaganda officers came to their meetings and repeated the same message continuously: “The Canadians will torture you. They will hurt you in terrible ways. They say they will kill all medical staff because you helped German soldiers.”

The nurses heard these warnings so many times that they believed every word. Margarete told the other nurses to hide pills in their pockets. If the Canadians came, they could swallow the pills and die quickly instead of being tortured.

Next to Margarete stood Elise Bauer, who was only 22 years old. Elise grew up on a farm in Bavaria, far from the war. The government had forced her to join the medical service eight months earlier. After three months of training in Munich, they sent her to this field hospital. She did not understand politics like Margarete did; she just wanted to help sick people and return home to her parents. But now, she was shaking with fear, believing today would be the day she died.

On the other side of the room, Anna Zimmermann tried not to cry. She was 19 years old and came from Berlin. Her father had died fighting in Russia, and her mother had disappeared when bombs destroyed their neighborhood. Anna joined the medical service to escape factory work, receiving almost no formal training and learning nursing by watching others. She did not trust the Nazi party like Margarete did—her father had died for nothing and her mother was gone—but she still believed the Canadians would kill her today.

The three women watched as a Canadian officer walked toward the hospital carrying a white flag. Margarete’s hands shook as she burned papers in the stove: patient records, supply lists, anything the enemy might use. She expected the Canadians to shoot them as soon as they came inside. She whispered to Elise, “Be brave. It will be quick.”

When the Canadian lieutenant came through the door, he did not raise his gun. He looked at the wounded German soldiers lying in beds and at the nurses in their blood-stained uniforms. Then he said something Margarete never expected to hear.

“You’re still nurses,” he said in clear German. “Medical personnel are protected under the Geneva Convention. You will continue to care for these patients until we arrange transport.”

Margarete stared at him, convinced this was a trick. Propaganda officers had said the Canadians followed no rules and would pretend to be kind before attacking when the nurses dropped their guard. She did not answer the lieutenant; she simply nodded slowly.

The Canadian soldiers did not hurt anyone that day. They brought food to the hospital: white bread with real butter and canned meat. Elise looked at the portions and could not believe her eyes. Each nurse received about 2,400 calories of food—a stark contrast to the 1,100 calories they had been eating daily for the past year. Anna secretly put bread in her pocket, believing the Canadians were fattening them up before killing them, like farmers feeding animals before slaughter.

That night, the nurses whispered to each other in the dark.

“Tomorrow, they will move us to a processing center,” Margarete said. “That is when the torture begins. That is what the propaganda officers told us.”

Elise asked if they should try to escape, but there was nowhere to go. The German army was falling apart, and the war was almost over. Anna wondered if she should take the hidden pills now before things got worse.

None of the three women could sleep. They lay in their beds worrying about what would happen tomorrow. Would the Canadians keep pretending to be kind? Would they separate the nurses and interrogate them one by one? Would they put them on a ship and drown them in the ocean? Everything they had been taught said yes. But the Canadian lieutenant had called them nurses, not prisoners. He had given them food instead of beatings, and that scared them more than anything because it made no sense. If the Canadians were going to kill them, why waste food? Why follow rules? Why call them nurses instead of enemies? Margarete held her hidden pills and wondered if she would need them tomorrow, unaware that her entire understanding of the world was about to fall apart.

April 17th, 1945

The next morning, Canadian soldiers brought breakfast to the hospital. Margarete watched them carry in boxes of food, struggling to comprehend what she was seeing: fresh white bread, creamy yellow butter, and cans containing actual meat. Each nurse received a portion that filled an entire plate. Margarete had not seen this much food on a single plate since 1942, before the war turned bad for Germany. The nurses ate carefully, unsure what to make of the generosity as their bodies recalled what real food felt like after months of watery soup and hard bread.

The strangest thing was how the Canadian soldiers acted. They did not yell or push; they called the nurses “Miss” and held doors open for them. When Margarete dropped a bandage, a Canadian private picked it up and handed it back to her, smiling and saying, “Here you go” in broken German.

Elise whispered to Anna later, “They are being polite. I do not understand why they are being polite.”

For two days, the Canadians allowed the nurses to finish taking care of the wounded German soldiers. Nobody hit them, questioned them about military secrets, or mistreated them. This confused Margarete most of all. Propaganda officers had insisted the Canadians were savages who followed no rules, but these soldiers acted with even more discipline than the German army.

On April 19th, the Canadians announced it was time to move. They loaded 27 nurses into covered trucks. Margarete expected cattle cars like the ones used to move prisoners in Germany, but the trucks had actual seats and canvas sides that allowed the nurses to look outside. Two guards rode with them, both of whom were women wearing Canadian Women’s Army Corps uniforms. One offered the German nurses cigarettes. Margarete refused, certain they were poisoned, but Anna took one and smoked it without ill effect.

As the trucks drove through the German countryside, the nurses saw sights that challenged everything they believed. They passed Canadian supply depots where boxes of food and medicine were stacked four meters high. They saw Canadian soldiers who appeared healthy and strong rather than thin and desperate. Elise guessed the Canadian soldiers weighed about 165 pounds on average, whereas the German soldiers they had treated weighed around 142 pounds or less. The trucks were new and ran smoothly, unlike German army trucks that constantly broke down and belched black smoke.

Everything the nurses saw delivered the same message: the Canadians had an abundance of food, fuel, vehicles, medicine, and men. This was not a starving, desperate enemy as propaganda had claimed, but a rich, powerful army that did not need to be cruel because it had already won.

Margarete tried to rationalize it. “This is American wealth,” she told the other nurses, “not Canadian strength. The Americans give them everything.” But her voice sounded weak even to herself.

Elise leaned close to Anna and whispered, “If they wanted to kill us, why waste all this food and fuel moving us around?”

After two days on the trucks, they reached a train station. Expecting freight cars once again, Margarete was proven wrong when the Canadians placed them on a passenger train with real seats and a washroom. They fed the nurses three meals a day. A Canadian nurse came to check on them: Captain Dorothy Mitchell, a 29-year-old from Saskatchewan. Dorothy spoke some German and answered their questions patiently.

“Where are we going?” Margarete asked.

Dorothy smiled and replied, “To Canada. You will be safe there. The war is almost over anyway.”

Canada was across the ocean. Margarete’s heart began to pound, convinced they were going to be drowned at sea—taken far from land and thrown overboard where no one would find their bodies.

Anna asked, “Will they separate us?” She could not imagine being alone among enemies.

Dorothy looked confused by the question. “No,” she said. “You will stay together. It is easier for medical personnel that way.”

On the train to the coast, Margarete and the nurses made quiet observations that contradicted everything they had been taught: Canadian guards carried no weapons; medics treated wounded Germans the same as wounded Canadians; and soldiers laughed and played cards like regular people rather than conquerors. None of the three women said it out loud, but they were all thinking the same thing: What if the propaganda was wrong? What if the Canadians really were not monsters? And if the propaganda lied about that, what else was a lie?

April 24th, 1945

The Atlantic Ocean stretched out in front of Margarete like an endless gray wall at a port on the French coast controlled by the Canadians. A massive ship waited for them: the HMS Letitia, a former passenger liner converted into a hospital ship painted white with red crosses on its sides.

The Canadian guards directed the 112 German female prisoners up the ramp. Margarete expected to be sent into the dark hold where cargo went, but guards led them to actual passenger cabins. Each room contained eight beds with real spring mattresses, flushing toilets, and sinks with clean running water.

A Canadian female doctor conducted medical examinations on each nurse professionally and respectfully. Margarete remained bewildered: why conduct medical exams on people you plan to execute? Nothing made sense.

The ship departed the next day. For ten days, the nurses traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, processing everything they had witnessed. On May 4th, the ship arrived in Halifax, Canada. Margarete looked at the harbor in disbelief—dozens of ships, organized docks, intact buildings, and electric lights everywhere.

Elise whispered, “Don’t they worry about bombs from the air?” then realized no enemy planes could reach Canada and that the war had never touched this place.

The Canadians processed them through customs with paperwork and photos like regular travelers, issuing each nurse a prisoner of war card that read: “Prisoner of War, Medical Personnel.” They were assigned to Transport Unit Seven, heading to Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Another clean, heated passenger train waited for them. As it pulled away from Halifax, Margarete looked back at the ocean, having crossed from a shattered continent to an untouched one where everything worked, still unable to comprehend why the Canadians had not killed them.

May 5th – May 8th, 1945

The journey covered 3,500 kilometers through Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Elise pressed her face against the window, watching endless forests, massive lakes, and intact cities pass by. She wrote in a small notebook: “May 6th, passed through a town called Montreal. No piles of broken bricks, no burned buildings. Children were playing in parks.”

The Canadians continued feeding them three meals every day, including real coffee, fresh bread, and fruit. When Anna saw an orange on her breakfast plate, she stared at it in awe, having not seen citrus fruit since 1939.

“How can they feed us like this if their country is starving from the war?” she whispered. But looking out the window revealed no starvation—only farms with fat cows and fields full of wheat.

On May 8th, the train arrived in Medicine Hat in southern Alberta. The prisoner of war camp sat 15 kilometers outside the small town, housing 550 German prisoners: 523 men in one section and 27 women in a separate area. The women’s section featured eight heated wooden sleeping barracks, a dining hall, a recreation building, and a small medical office. Each woman received her own metal bed with a mattress, blanket, and pillow, alongside indoor plumbing.

The recreation building surprised Elise the most: it housed a library with books in German, a radio, craft supplies, and a piano. Margarete was rendered speechless. In the German army, soldiers were punished for minor mistakes; here, prisoners were given pianos.

The next morning, May 9th, the camp commander, Major William Preston, met with the nurses. He stood before the 27 women and said, “We have a problem. The hospital in Medicine Hat does not have enough nurses because many Canadian nurses are overseas helping with the war. We need medical help.” He paused, looking at each woman. “You’re still nurses. Would you be willing to work at the hospital under supervision?”

The room went completely silent. Work at a Canadian hospital? Treating Canadian people?

Major Preston explained that the work was voluntary, paid 50 cents a day, and offered better rations and greater freedom of movement. Margarete struggled to process the offer. Elise immediately raised her hand and agreed. Anna raised her hand too, but asked, “What is the trick? What do you really want from us?”

Major Preston shook his head. “No trick. We need nurses. You are nurses. You will work with Canadian supervisors. That is all.”

May 15th, 1945

Six German nurses, including Margarete, Elise, and Anna, began working at Medicine Hat General Hospital, a 247-bed facility. Head Nurse Katherine Ross assigned each German nurse to a different department: Elise to the children’s wing, Anna to surgery, and Margarete to maternity.

Elise could not believe she was treating Canadian children, nor Anna that she was assisting in surgeries on Canadian patients. Margarete felt overwhelmed as she helped Canadian women deliver babies, treated as a regular colleague by Canadian staff. The hospital was stocked with abundant medicine, clean linens, functional X-ray machines, and working refrigeration.

That night, Margarete wrote in her secret diary: “May 15th, I dressed the wounds of an enemy soldier today. He thanked me. He called me nurse, not a bad name. What is this place?”

Over the next three months, the nurses adapted to their new reality. The cafeteria offered unlimited food; Anna gained eight kilograms in a single month as her body recovered from chronic hunger. Elise wrote to her parents in Bavaria: “Mother, I eat three times every day. Real meat, vegetables. I am no longer hungry.”

Supply closets held more penicillin than entire German field hospitals had possessed during the war. Patients and staff treated them with respect and gratitude.

However, back at the camp, opinions among German prisoners were divided. Some retained their Nazi beliefs and accused the working nurses of being traitors, while others accepted that the war was over. Margarete felt torn between her past indoctrination and her daily experiences.

Anna wrote in a letter she never sent: “We were told they were monsters. They treat us better than our own army did.”

December 25th, 1945

Christmas morning arrived cold and bright. Although the war had ended on May 8th, the nurses remained in Canada due to the destruction in Germany.

The Canadian staff invited the German prisoners to a Christmas party at the hospital. Margarete initially resisted, believing it was wrong to celebrate with the enemy, but Elise reasoned, “They are not treating us like enemies. Why should we treat them that way?”

The cafeteria was decorated with a Christmas tree, paper chains, and candles, while Christmas songs played on the radio. Forty people—Canadian doctors, nurses, German prisoners, and patients—shared a feast of turkey, stuffing, cranberries, mashed potatoes, pies, and wine.

After dinner, Katherine Ross offered a toast: “To our friends and family who are far away. To peace, to healing. And to our German colleagues who have helped us save lives this year. Thank you.”

Dr. James Murphy, a surgeon whose brother had died fighting German forces on D-Day, walked over to Margarete and held out his hand. “Nurse Hoffmann,” he said, “I want to thank you for helping me in surgery these past months. You are one of the finest nurses I have ever worked with.”

Margarete stared at his hand, overwhelmed by the realization that a man whose brother had been killed by her countrymen was treating her with profound respect. Tears ran down her face as eight months of fear, confusion, and crumbling beliefs culminated at once. She stood up and ran outside into the minus-15°C cold.

Elise and Anna followed her into the snow.

“Are you okay?” Elise asked.

Margarete shook her head. “No, I am not okay. Everything I believed was lies. Everything we were taught was propaganda. They told us the Canadians would torture us and kill us. They told us we were superior and they were weak. They told us cruelty was strength. It was all lies, Elise, all of it.”

Elise put her arm around Margarete’s shoulders. “Yes,” she said quietly. “And we survived long enough to learn the truth.”

Anna handed them their coats, asking, “What happens when we go home to Germany?”

None of them had an answer. They knew their home country lay in ruins, and the truths they had learned in Canada would be difficult for many back home to accept.

1946

By January 1946, Margarete stopped defending the Nazi party in the barracks, openly confronting remaining loyalists like Frau Kessler, who accused her of shaming Germany.

“I shame Germany by denying the truth,” Margarete responded.

The 112 female prisoners split into distinct groups: roughly 30 remained committed to Nazi ideology, 60 focused solely on survival and returning home, and 22—including Margarete, Elise, and Anna—openly acknowledged that their former beliefs were built on falsehoods.

Margarete dedicated herself to learning English and studying democratic principles. Elise taught English classes to fellow prisoners and planned to pursue formal nursing education to help rebuild Germany. Anna channeled her anger into hard work at the hospital, volunteering for extra shifts and mastering English rapidly.

Katherine Ross noted in her diary: “The women who arrived last May are not the same women who will leave. Some became harder and more bitter, but others, especially Margarete, have truly changed. She questions everything. She learns everything. She will be a remarkable nurse when she goes home.”

By the summer of 1946, only 27 female prisoners remained at the Medicine Hat camp. Official orders arrived in September stating that all German prisoners would be repatriated by December 31st, with the Medicine Hat group scheduled to depart on October 15th.

On October 10th, the German nurses worked their final shift at Medicine Hat General Hospital. The Canadian staff hosted a farewell gathering, presenting them with textbooks, medical supplies, and personal recommendations to assist them in rebuilding their lives and their country upon their return.

The women who still believed in Nazi ideas said they could not wait to leave. Frau Kessler told Margarete, “Do not be fooled. They were only soft because they won. If we had won, we would have been much harder on them.” Margarete had heard enough. She said, “We lost because we were cruel. They won because they were better than us. Accept it.”

On October 15th, the train left Medicine Hat. It went east across Canada on the same tracks they had traveled 17 months before, but everything felt different now. Elise watched the forests and lakes go by. She said, “I am leaving the first place that ever treated me like a human being instead of a tool.” Anna looked at the farms and cities and asked, “Will Germany ever look like this? No damage, no war, just peace?” Margarete did not talk. She wrote in her diary and looked out the window.

The ship left Halifax on October 16th. It was called the SS Marine Raven. It was not a hospital ship like before; it was a cargo ship converted to carry people. The conditions were harder. The food was basic but enough. There were 380 German prisoners going home from different Canadian camps. The crossing took 12 days.

During the voyage, news came over the radio. The judges at Nuremberg gave their sentences: some Nazi leaders would hang, while others would go to prison for life. The ship also got reports that Germany would have a terrible winter and there was not enough food. The prisoners who still loved the Nazi party were happy to go home anyway. The ones who had changed, like Margarete, Elise, and Anna, felt sick with worry. Margarete said to Elise, “We are bringing truth back to a place that does not want truth.”

On October 28th, 1946, the ship arrived at Bremerhaven in Germany. Margarete saw her homeland for the first time in 18 months. What she saw made her want to cry. The port was destroyed. Some of it was rebuilt, but most was still broken. Mountains of rubble were everywhere, with people who looked like skeletons walking around, and British soldiers with guns controlling everything.

The prisoners went through a processing center. Men in uniforms asked them questions about their time as prisoners. Some women lied and said the Canadians were mean and cruel because that was what the questioners wanted to hear. Margarete told the truth. She said the Canadians treated them well and taught them important things. The man writing her answers put a mark on her paper that said “potentially subversive.” That meant the government thought she might cause trouble.

The guards searched all their bags. They took the medical supplies Katherine had given them, saying prisoners could not bring foreign materials into Germany. They gave each woman a travel permit to go to her home region. Anna’s paper said Berlin, which was now controlled by the Soviet army. Elise’s said Bavaria, which was controlled by the American army. Margarete’s said Hamburg, which was controlled by the British army.

Margarete arrived in Hamburg on November 2nd. Her old neighborhood was half destroyed. Her mother was living in the basement of a bombed building. When Margarete walked in, her mother stared at her and then said, “Where were you while we starved? You were living with the enemy.” Margarete tried to explain how the Canadians treated her, but her mother did not believe her. She said Margarete was a collaborator and a traitor. Margarete’s brother had died fighting in Russia, and her mother blamed Margarete for being alive.

Elise went to her family farm in Bavaria on November 5th. The farm had mostly survived, and her parents were alive. Her mother cried and hugged her. Her father refused to talk about the war or the Nazi party—he refused to discuss any of it. Elise kept most of her prisoner story secret. She wrote a letter to Katherine Ross and sent it through the American Army mail system.

Anna reached Berlin on November 10th. Her entire neighborhood was gone—just rubble and destroyed buildings. She could not find her mother or any trace of her home. The Soviet soldiers watched everyone carefully. Anna found distant relatives in the western part of the city who looked at her with suspicion, thinking a prisoner in Canada might now be a spy for the Americans. Anna got a job at a damaged hospital in the ruins. She never told anyone about Canada, keeping the cookbook hidden as her only treasure.

The three women learned the hardest lesson. They went from German propaganda to Canadian reality to German ruins. They went from expecting death to receiving kindness to facing actual starvation. They learned the truth, but their country did not want to hear it.

The years after the war were hard for all three women, but they each found their own path forward. Margarete stayed in Hamburg and worked at a hospital for refugees and displaced people. She used everything she had learned in Medicine Hat, treating sick people the Canadian way: with dignity and the best medicine available.

In 1948, she received a letter from Katherine Ross offering to sponsor her to immigrate to Canada. Margarete thought about it for months—should she abandon her homeland or escape the hopelessness? In 1949, she applied. In 1950, at age 39, she moved to Saskatchewan. She worked at Regina General Hospital and became friends with Katherine again. They stayed friends until Katherine died. Margarete never married; she gave her whole life to nursing.

Elise stayed in Bavaria and worked at a small hospital in the countryside. She quietly used the Canadian nursing methods she had learned, though she did not tell people where she learned them. In 1951, she finally went to a real nursing school using the letter Dr. Murphy had written for her. By 1960, she was the head nurse at a teaching hospital in Munich. She married an American soldier in 1952 and had three children. She kept writing letters to the Canadian family who had been kind to her. In 1975, when she was 52 years old, she went back to Medicine Hat with her family for a 30-year anniversary visit. She saw Katherine and Dr. Murphy again; they were old now, but they remembered her.

Anna had the hardest time. Berlin was divided and dangerous. She worked in hospitals in the Soviet-controlled part under terrible conditions, but she used the medical knowledge from Canada without ever saying where she learned it. In 1950, she escaped to West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade and got a job at an American field hospital. The American doctors noticed she had unusual nursing skills.

In 1953, she married a German-American soldier and moved to Minnesota. From 1955 to 1985, she worked as a nurse in Minneapolis. She taught other nurses the Canadian methods, simply saying she had learned them during wartime experience. In 1987, she went back to Germany for the first time in 37 years. Only then did she tell her daughter the true story about being a prisoner in Canada.

In 1976, the Canadian government invited former German prisoners to come back for a reunion. Forty-seven people who had been at Medicine Hat came back for the visit. Eight of the original 27 nurses were there, including Margarete and Elise. Anna could not come because she was sick. The town of Medicine Hat held a ceremony where the mayor declared it POW Reconciliation Day. Katherine Ross, who was retired by then, gave a speech. She said, “These women taught us that enemies are just people on the other side of lies, and people can change when they are given truth and kindness.”

The local newspaper interviewed some of the former prisoners. Several Canadians had married former prisoners, and many had moved to Canada permanently. The hospital put up a metal sign that said: “In honor of German nurses who served here 1945 to 1946, proving humanity transcends conflict.”

In the 1980s, a historian from the University of Alberta interviewed the surviving prisoners. Margarete gave him her diary, her letters, and all her records. Elise gave him hospital documents from Medicine Hat, and Anna finally agreed to share her story for an oral history project. The recordings were saved at the Canadian War Museum. Margarete said in her interview, “Canada defeated our ideology without firing a shot at us. They fed us, healed us, and showed us a different way. That victory was more complete than any battlefield win.”

In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the war ending, there was one final reunion in Medicine Hat. Only 12 former prisoners could come. They were between 70 and 80 years old now, but all three women—Margarete, Elise, and Anna—were still alive and able to travel. They stood together in the hospital where they had worked 50 years before. The hospital was modern now, but the memorial sign was still there.

Local students came to interview them for a history project. One student asked Margarete, “Did you forgive the Canadians for winning the war?” Margarete smiled. She was 84 years old. She said, “No, I thank them. There is a difference.”

The three women stood in front of the memorial sign that said, “You’re still nurses.” They were old now. Margarete died in 2002 at age 91. Elise died in 2015 at age 92. Anna died in 2008 at age 82. But before they died, they told their stories.

Margarete said, “We came here expecting monsters and found humans. We were told strength means cruelty, but we learned strength means compassion. Fifty years later, I understand. Canada did not defeat us with weapons. They defeated our lies with truth. That is the victory that lasts.”

Elise said, “I was 22 when I was captured. I thought my life was over. Instead, it began. Here I learned that nursing is not about nation or ideology. It is about healing anyone who suffers. That lesson shaped everything I became.”

Anna said, “In Berlin, I was told Canada was the enemy. In Medicine Hat, they showed me what the real enemy was: propaganda, lies, the ideology that destroyed my country. And they taught me the cure: evidence, kindness, truth. Simple things, but they saved my life.”

The lesson is clear. Humanity, when given a chance, chooses compassion over revenge. Truth, when shown clearly, defeats propaganda. And people, when treated with dignity, often become their best selves instead of their worst.

The question for all of us today is this: In our world of division and propaganda, which approach will we choose? The kindness that transforms enemies into colleagues, or the cruelty that creates enemies from neighbors?

Of the 27 German nurses who came to Medicine Hat between 1945 and 1946, 23 lived to old age, 14 eventually moved to Canada or North America, and eight kept contact with Canadian friends for their whole lives. None ever reported being mistreated in the POW camps. And every single one who stayed open to truth was transformed by it.