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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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136 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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that they were Jews and could be presented as a
group — a process, as we shall observe, close to that of selections in
Auschwitz. That same psychiatrist had copied phrases from the SS files of
Dachau and Ravensbrück on the backs of their photographs. On one:
“Inflammatory Jew hostile to Germans; in camp lazy and insolent.”
Another: “Anti-German disposition. Symptoms: Well-known functionary of the
KPD [German Communist Party], militant agitator.” And still another:
“Diagnosis: Fanatical German-hater and asocial psychopath. Principal
symptoms: inveterate Communist, ineligible for military service.”9 As a postwar German psychiatrist stated, “It
would be difficult to find a clearer documentation of the political
manipulation of the psychiatric profession.”10
One key to the nature of 14f13 lies in the term “special
treatment” (Sonderbehandlung) as part of the program's name.
“Special treatment,” though it was to become a euphemism for killing
in general was used originally (from 1939) as a specific Gestapo concept and
code term legitimating extralegal execution. Thus, Reinhard Heydrich issued
decrees, on, 3 and 20 September. 1939, distinguishing cases that could be taken
care of “in the accustomed manner and those which require[d] special
treatment”: the latter, because of their seriousness danger, and
“propaganda consequences deserve to be considered for elimination
ruthlessly and without respect of persons.” The concept was consistent
with Hitler’s formally articulated claim (made in October 1939, soon after
the outbreak of war) to the right of deciding over life and death of all
Germans without regard for existing laws T4 itself had been initiated under
this claim but 14f13 structured it specifically in connection with the
principle of “special treatment.” The term then was extended to a
variety of cases in the work of the secret police, and to decrees by leaders of
the Race and Resettlement Office concerning the handling of racially
undesirable people. By the middle of 1941 the term was being used
“matter-of-factly” in connection with extermination of Jews in the
East, even to the creation of different verb forms such as a past tense
“specially treated” (sonderbehandelt). In June 1942,
Himmler approved a “euthanasia” death for tubercular Polish workers
by stating, “I have no objection to giving special treatment to the Polish
nationals . . . who have been certified by authorized physicians to be
incurable.”11
The use of the
term “special treatment” followed a sequence, then, of being applied
first to allegedly dangerous criminals then to medically determined
“unworthy life” in the greater society (in the T4 program, where,
however, the term was not widely used), and finally to still-medicalized
“euthanasia” in the camps (via 14f13, where it was always used) of
all groups considered by the regime to be undesirable (Jews, homosexuals,
political opponents, ordinary criminals, “shiftless elements,”
Catholic critics, etc.) and now inclusively viewed as “unworthy
life.” The extension of the aura of “euthanasia” into the camps
in this way widened indefinitely the potential radius of medicalized killing.
And that form of extralegal but legitimated killing took on a special priority
and absolute- [...ness] |
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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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