Julie A. Gorges

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Treating ‘wounds of the heart’

During my two years at The Puyallup Herald, my favorite stories were features. A story about adults who were adopted and later reunited with their birth parents (the outcomes were not always positive), a three-part series on the homeless, a story about a man’s memories of World War II and an article about an 83-year-old woman who had traveled to 183 countries after she lost her husband were some of my favorites.

 

Below is a story about a local doctor, Dr. Henry Reitzug, who visited Albania as a volunteer in 1999 to help ethnic Albanian refugees forced out of Kosovo by Serb forces. While Reitzug was in Albania, he listened to countless horror stories with the help of translators as Kosovar refugees found their way to safety in camps and transfer stations.

 

The article about Dr. Reitzug was originally published in the June 25, 1999 issue of The Puyallup Herald. Here, in part, is a copy of that article:

One man, Dr. Henry Reitzug recalled last week, wept bitterly as he told how all four of his sons had been killed.

 

A woman in her early 40s was suffering from terminal breast cancer. She was dying amid the chaos in a foreign place knowing she would never see her home again.

 

One family was given only a half-hour notice to leave their village and could not find their 19-year-old son. The family never saw him again.

 

Another family was found by Serb soldiers as they were hiding in the mountains making soup. They offered some to the soldiers. When the soldiers tasted it and discovered there was not meat in it, one of the men grabbed a young girl and slit her throat.

 

These stories of suffering and death during the “ethnic cleansing” carried out by Serbs are the cause of nightmares, which Reitzug said he has almost every night.

 

Still, he does not regret going and doing what he could.

 

Reitzug, who lives in Graham and works at Woodcreek Pediatrics on South Hill, decided to go to Albania 10 days after NATO bombed Kosovo in Yugoslavia. He had bought a copy of The New York Times, which was full of photos of refugees. Reitzug’s parents were German refugees during World War II, so he felt a special connection to the Kosovars struggling to stay alive.

 

“God put it into my heart to go,” he said. “You can’t resist when you are drawn to go.”

 

Reitzug began researching different relief agencies. He discovered Northwest Medical Teams, which has its headquarters in Portland, through the Internet and, after discussing the decision with his family, called the agency to volunteer.

 

He was sent to Shkodre in northern Albania, about 30 miles from the Yugoslavia border, as part of a six-member team of medical doctors.

 

Reitzug admits that when he first arrived the culture shock was nearly too much to bear. The filth, the heat, humidity and sweat, the ever-present dust, the constant sound of gunfire, the uncontrollable crime, the stench of human waste, and the drone of bomber planes were all unnerving.

 

“I knew this was the poorest country in Europe, but I was not prepared for what that meant,” he said.

 

“One of the volunteers was held up in the middle of the day at gun point and robbed,” he added. “We saw a body lying in the middle of a road with a bullet through his head. This had nothing to do with the war. With a 40 percent unemployment rate, the criminal element had taken over.”

 

After a week there, Reitzug said, he became somewhat desensitized to the harsh conditions and began focusing on the refugees from the Kosovo region of Yugoslavia as they arrived with their harrowing stories.

 

A group of men told how they were systematically rounded up, taken from their homes, imprisoned for 12 days with 60 men to a room, beaten, abused and malnourished. They were then told to walk to freedom.

 

The men walked for two weeks; several were beaten and robbed on their way to the camps. They had not been allowed to shave, which caused the men to be treated harshly since terrorists and rebels are known to remain unshaven.

 

They had no money to buy food, they had been robbed of all means of identification, as well as stripped of their dignity. Some had large bruises; a few suffered broken ribs.

 

“They were broken men by the time they got to us,” Reitzug said.

 

Families also flocked to the refugee camps – most had been separated from their husbands and fathers. Women arrived dehydrated with parched, bleeding lips and glazed looks, Reitzug said. They were beyond any kind of emotion and could not laugh or cry. Mothers were simply surviving for their children.

 

Babies were irritable and cried constantly. Children played with soccer balls and Frisbees the camps provided outside war-torn building pockmarked with bullet holes.

 

The doctors – dressed in shorts, T-shirts and fishing vests – filled their pockets with candy for the children and tried to make them smile so the mothers would feel less burdened. They also provided crayons and paper and encouraged the children to draw pictures about their experiences.

 

“Sometimes it was easier for them to draw pictures than to talk about what had happened,” Reitzug said.

 

Although Reitzug and the other medical doctors treated the refugees for dehydration and physical wounds, more often they treated “the wounds of the heart.”

 

“The medical procedures were standard and simple,” Reitzug said. “I called it high-touch, low-tech care. We were there, not to do elaborate procedures, but as part of a humanitarian effort. These people needed to be touched and hugged.”

 

“This one family had a 13-year-old daughter who had completely shut down,” he added. “She had witnessed her brother getting killed, her classmates raped and killed, and her home burned. There is a limit to what the human mind and heart can endure. Her whole world had disappeared. She would not eat or drink or talk.

 

“We got her stabilized, then took the family to the train to say good-bye. I gave the father a hug. He hugged me hard and desperately and would not let me go. Here was a man who had lost control of what happened to his family. He did not know where they were going, except that it was further away from home.”

 

Reitzug, a father of five, empathized with the father.

 

“You see yourself as the protector of your family and this man could do nothing,” he said. “He had lost all control over what happened to his family.”

 

Reitzug still thinks about the refugees and is concerned for their future. He is currently learning the Albanian language as he ponders a possible return in the future. Even if he doesn’t go back, Reitzug will never forget the people he met there.

 

“I wanted to find a souvenir to bring home, but Albania is not exactly the kind of place that sells souvenirs,” he said. “Then I remembered that I had this handkerchief that I used to wipe people’s tears. That’s my souvenir.”