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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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108 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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while participating in the Nazi youth movement,
volunteering for resettlement work with ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, and
living out the “beautiful time” of university medical studies before
the war. Dr. R. did, however, recall a moment of pain when a popular Jewish
teacher was dismissed from his former Gymnasium, or secondary school: “His
facial expression was ... deeply saddened ... something I will never
forget.” But Dr. R. claimed that virulent anti-Semitism was relatively
absent where he had studied; thus he had not experienced the worst excesses of
Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938), a night when Jewish homes and shops
throughout Germany were looted, burned, and destroyed, and many Jews killed and
imprisoned.
Like Dr. D., Dr. R. had been thrust into the military
before completing his medical work, and was pleased to find there a physician
mentor to whom he became very close. After a period of combat (in which he
thrived) and then a lull (in which he had little to do), Dr. R. was called in
and told that he was being assigned to an “indispensable” civilian
position at the Führer’s Chancellery. Excited by the prospect and
congratulated by everyone, “I took off my precious uniform” and
reported to Berlin. But instead of being briefed by Heyde or another
psychiatric leader of the project he was sent directly to the killing center
where he was to work, and briefed by the chief doctor there, a nonpsychiatric
medical professor and ardent Nazi. The latter impressed on R. the
program’s legality and priority as a direct Fuhrer order, its application
only to completely withdrawn mental patients who had been well screened by
authoritative professors its necessity during wartime to conserve food, and
even its theological justification by a particular Catholic priest who had
stated that “euthanasia” was morally justifiable in certain cases.
Dr. R had attended some of Heyde’s lectures at medical school, and the
fact that the professor’s name was actively invoked “added to the
reassurance” he felt.
That emphasis on acceptance of moral
justification, one must keep in mind, is consistent with Dr. R.’s legal
defense, as is his memory of not being shocked by the killing because he had
been more or less persuaded of its propriety. Another factor might, have been.
that, as a military doctor, he was “used to seeing death.” What
clearly did shock him was that someone who didn't have the slightest inkling of
psychiatry would be sent to the killing center. He was bitterly disappointed:
“I had imagined that I would be able to do medical work under the guidance
of exerienced doctors and instead was pulled out of the Wehrmacht”
and “put in a place just wrong for me.”
He went to the chief
doctor and told him that lacking any background or interest whatsoever in
psychiatry, he was incapable of doing the work: the job “is not right for
me. “R. even managed to meet with Heyde and Brack at the Chancellery,
told them the same thing, and was immediately offered a change in assignment
“without ... any difficulty whatsoever.”
He was evasive about
details of what he did at the killing center. While admitting that he checked
patients against their charts to prepare plausi- […ble] |
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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 108 |
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