Gebele at last managed to visit Dr. Steijns. He was horrified to find him in such a miserable condition. Not only physically, but mentally too. Dr. Steijns had been forced to treat the sick in the Totenlager, which was down in the Wiener Graben. Since there was no equipment or medicine available, it was, in reality, impossible to treat patients. For a doctor, this must have been an added agony to his own failing health.
“I have assured him of my complete support,” Gebele wrote, “and I am making sure he can leave here [the Totenlager] and that he will have a better place to work and have better food.”
Gebele was impressed by Dr. Steijns’s demeanor and was convinced he was a good doctor and a sensitive man. He was also touched by Dr. Steijns’s honesty in relating what he had suffered in Camp Vught. Gebele was not used to people taking him into their confidence, and he accepted the doctor as “a true comrade whom I have saved out of the clutches of death.”
He also passed grateful thanks from Dr. Steijns to Sabine for worrying about him.
Just as Gebele had sent a letter to Sabine’s mother to reassure her, he now sent a letter to Dr. Steijns’s wife to tell her that her husband was alive. He promised he would give Sabine more details about Dr. Steijns when she next came to visit him in his office.