Imagine this scene: “One young woman, fearing she would not survive, stepped out of the crowd and handed her infant to one of the female doctors.” Those are the words of American Jewish nurse Ellen Siegel, recalling that moment from Shatila—one of Lebanon’s 12 official Palestinian refugee camps, established in 1949—and the adjacent Sabra neighborhood, which was predominantly Palestinian but was not itself an UNRWA refugee camp. Siegel had volunteered to go to Lebanon as a nurse to help Palestinians and Lebanese civilians caught up in Israel’s 1982 invasion, and was working at Gaza Hospital in the Sabra area when the massacre began.

On September 18, as she and other foreign medical workers were being forced out of the hospital by Phalangist militiamen, Siegel watched her colleague, volunteer doctor Swee Ang, carry the baby a short distance before a militiaman stopped her, took the infant, and handed it back to its mother.

On September 18, as she and other foreign medical workers were being forced out of the hospital by Phalangist militiamen, Siegel watched her colleague, volunteer doctor Swee Ang, carry the baby a short distance before a militiaman stopped her, took the infant, and handed it back to its mother.

Around them, Siegel recalled, women and children were huddled under the guard of armed men while dead bodies lay along the streets.

Next week, September 17, marks the second day of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which began on September 16, 1982, and ended on September 18—44 years ago. Lasting approximately 43 hours, the slaughter was carried out by Lebanese Phalangist militiamen while Israeli forces surrounded and controlled the area. The exact number of civilians killed remains disputed, with estimates ranging from several hundred to over three thousand; Palestinian sources have put the death toll at more than 3,500.

The scene carried a particular horror for Siegel, a Jewish American who had grown up in the shadow of the Holocaust. She recalled thinking of Jewish mothers in Germany and Poland handing their infants to strangers in desperate attempts to save them from extermination. She had been taught, she wrote, that whenever she witnessed an........

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