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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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106 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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— transfer of responsibility and the pursuit of
science. He consciously renounced responsibility: “I told [Heyde] I could
not take on any responsibility at all because I knew I was not qualified
medically,” and “Heyde said, ‘All right, you will not have
responsibility,’ ” emphasizing that professors and specialists would
make careful evaluations and “the committee would make the final
decision.” His responsibility, Dr. D. was told, was to “render this
... very valuable service to the colleague in charge” of the killing
center. It was a matter of loyalty and sacrifice, for, as he came to feel,
“the soldiers at the front also had to do things they did not like.”
The claim of his responsibility lay not with the patients but with his
superior, his country, his race.
And responsibility became inseparable
from his relationship to the authority of the regime: “The whole
system radiated that authority. Like it or not, I was part of it. . . . I had
no choice. I was in this web — this network of authority If you talk to
people [in general terms about possibly leaving], they would say, you have to
stay wherever you are, ... where you are needed. Don’t disturb the
organization.”
The opportunity for his second mode of adaptation
occurred with the appearance of a leading German neuropathologist at the
killing center to obtain brains for dissection. Dr. D. “took this as . . .
an opportunity” to approach the visitor about the possibility of
establishing “a pathology department” at the killing center, and of
spending a few weeks in the professor’s department “in order to get a
better sense of things and be better prepared for this task” He saw this
as a chance to spend time away from the killing center, as he sought to do
whenever possible. But he also immersed himself in the task, studied medical
histories of patients “and tried to find those whose brains might
eventually be of interest,” in accordance with the professor’s
research concerns. D. was even given a nurse assistant to help him in what he
came to see as “preparatory work .... that made further scientific work
possible.” Inevitably he came to see himself as serving science and his
duty as “saving those things that still could possibly be of value
scientifically for psychiatry in general … [so that] studying these brains
would get us closer to understanding diseases, and of course curing those
diseases.” He was quite proud to add, “The Berlin Institute gave
recognition to this ... work.”
Horst D. had, in other words, found
a way to connect the killing work with medical research and to feel that
he was doing his duty as defined both by his immediate group and by
“science .” Or to put things another way a new sense of serving
medicine and science enabled him psychologically, to go on with the killing.
He welcomed the official cessation of the program after which he was
reassigned to the military for the remaining years of the war. In 1945, he went
into medical practice, took “special pleasure in giving life,” and
described how “I brought children into the world in the middle of the
night.” Serving life helped ease a residual sense of guilt that he
experienced only, indirectly. He would feel “a little awkward” when
with |
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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 106 |
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