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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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75 |
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| “Euthanasia”: Direct Medical
Killing |
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“covered by two more.” For instance, at each
killing center, there was a “Special Registry Office,” which had a
subdivision whose specific task it was to determine a suitable death date for
each patient. On the death certificate prepared by the doctor, the date of
death was always omitted, to be provided by this department. On the basis of
its “timecards” and “death files,“ it could prevent the
recording of large numbers of deaths at a particular place during a particular
time sequence.68
The bureaucracy of
deception extended — logically, one might say — to the ashes of
cremated patients, which were haphazardly mixed together so that the urn
received by the family of a dead patient contained ashes that were not their
relative’s. (Families were told that quick cremation was necessary,
especially during wartime, for public health reasons.) One of the
program’s leaders later said that he objected vehemently “for reasons
of piety” when the policy had to be implemented because of a directive
that corpses no longer be cremated individually. He claimed to have said to the
administrator responsible for the order: “Even if the German people
forgive you everything, they will never forgive you this.”69 While one must be skeptical about any such
remembered conversation, it could suggest the existence, even then, of a
glimmer of awareness of the desecration in this final medical falsification.
Inevitably, there were slip-ups in the bureaucracy of deception: a
family receiving two urns; or being told that a patient, whose appendix had
been removed earlier, had died of appendicitis; or being notified of the death
of a patient who had not actually been killed and was alive and physically
well. Or people learned (especially as church groups with national contacts
began to look into the matter) of the suspicious deaths of a group of patients
sent out together from the same mental hospital;, or of letters received by
families, at the same time in various parts of Germany, announcing the deaths
of patients who were known to be physically healthy shortly after their arrival
at a particular institution.
In addition, people working at killing
centers would drink heavily at nearby bars and sometimes reveal aspects of what
they were doing. Local people employed in “euthanasia” station
kitchens and laundries also spread the word. Sometimes transfer procedures were
conducted where they could be seen — even on occasion in a town
marketplace — so that many people witnessed the force used on some
recalcitrant victims.
And there was direct sensory evidence of the
killing that no bureaucratic deception could eliminate: “The heavy smoke
from the crematory building is said to be visible over Hadamar every day.”
And: “At full capacity ... [the chimneys at Hartheim] smoked day and
night. Locks of hair went up through the chimneys and landed in the
street.” These bureaucratic oversights were mentioned in Nazi documents
critical of the way the program was run and urging that “more sensitivity
be exercised in carrying out these activities.”70 But the “mistakes” were partly a
product of the regime’s own conflicts and contradictions about its
principle of secrecy. In spite of the elaborate cover-up at every level and the
pledge |
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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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Page 75 |
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