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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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25 |
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| Sterilization and the Nazi Biomedical
Vision |
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Once in power — Hitler took the oath of office as
Chancellor of the Third Reich on 30 January 1933 — the Nazi regime made
sterilization the first application of the biomedical imagination to this issue
of collective life or death. On 22 June, Wilhelm Frick, the minister of the
interior, introduced the early sterilization law with a declaration that
Germany was in grave danger of Volkstod (“death of the people”
[or “nation” or “race"]) and that harsh and sweeping measures
were therefore imperative. The law was implemented three weeks later, less than
six months after Hitler had become chancellor, and was extended by amendation
later that year. It became basic sterilization doctrine and set the tone for
the regime's medicalized approach to “life unworthy of life.”
Included among the “hereditarily sick” who were to be surgically
sterilized were the categories of congenital feeblemindedness (now called
mental deficiency), an estimated 200,000; schizophrenia, 80,000; manic
depressive insanity, 20,000; epilepsy, 60,000; Huntington’s chorea (a
hereditary brain disorder), 600; hereditary blindness, 4,000; hereditary
deafness, 16,000; grave bodily malformation, 20,000; and hereditary alcoholism,
10,000. The projected total of 410,000 was considered only preliminary, drawn
mostly from people already in institutions; it was assumed that much greater
numbers of people would eventually be identified and sterilized.
Special “Hereditary Health Courts” were set up to make
decisions on sterilization, their composition reflecting the desired
combination of medicalization and Nazi Party influence. Of the three members,
two were physicians — one an administrative health officer likely to have
close Party ties and the other ostensibly knowledgeable about issues of
hereditary health; the third was a district judge, also likely to be close to
the regime, who served as chairman and coordinator. There were also appeals
courts, which made final decisions in contested cases and on which some of the
regime’s most recognized medical leaders served. All physicians were
legally required to report to health officers anyone they encountered in their
practice or elsewhere who fell into any of the preceding categories for
sterilization, and also to give testimony on such matters unrestricted by the
principle of patient-doctor confidentiality. Physicians also performed the
surgical procedures. The entire process was backed up by law and police
power.10
On 18 October 1935, a major
ordinance regulating sterilization and the issuing of marriage licenses
followed directly upon the notorious Nuremberg Laws (15 September), which
prohibited marriage or any sexual contact between Jews and non-Jews. The
Nuremberg lawmakers described themselves as “permeated with the knowledge
that the purity of the German blood is a precondition for the continued
existence of the German people, and filled with the inflexible determination to
make the German nation secure for all future time.”11
There were revealing discussions of
method. The favored surgical |
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THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
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