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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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165 |
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| Selections on the Ramp |
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consisting of about 1,500 people, about 1,200 to
1,300 went to the gas chambers. Very seldom was the percentage greater of those
who were permitted to live. At these selections Mengele and [Dr. Heinz] Thilo
made their selections while whistling a melody. Those elected for the gas
chambers had to undress in front of the gas chambers and were then chased into
them with whip lashes, then the doors were closed and the gassing took place.
After about eight minutes (death occurred after about four minutes) the
chambers were opened and a special Kommando for this purpose had to take the
corpses for cremation to the furnaces, which were burning day and night. There
were not enough ovens at the time of the Hungarian transports [beginning in
late May 1944] so that large trenches had to be dug to burn the corpses. Here
the wood was sprayed with petroleum. Into these trenches the corpses were
thrown. Often living children and adults were thrown into the burning trenches.
These poor ones died a terrible death by burning. The necessary oil and fats
for the burning were obtained partly from the corpses of the gassed in order to
save petroleum.¹ |
For those entering the camp, as Marianne F. went on to
describe, there were a series of initiatory humiliations: undressing completely
in front of SS men when entering the shower or “sauna”; having all of
one’s bodily hair shaved (“I grant you, good for ... preventing all
the lice, which of course were there, but psychologically, . . . it was
unbelievably degrading .. . .”); the issuing of minimal, ill-fitting
clothing, mostly old Russian prisoners’ uniforms; and the tattooing
(“I remember when ... that thing [the number tattooed on each
prisoner’s forearm] was put on, . . . it got infected and everything, and
I suppose swollen and what have you — I never felt any pain — you
were really numb”).
She spoke of the psychological effectiveness
of the whole process: |
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[There was] this fiendish insight that whoever
organized . . .. it had. And the fact that if you do something that is totally
unbelievable and ... you are incapable of believing, you don’t believe it.
And the things that went on in Auschwitz ... the gas chambers — nobody
would have believed that. And then the houses that the crematoria had —
you know, brick houses, windows, curtains, white picket fences around the
front. And people never thought of anything — regardless of chimneys
smoking. They could not believe it .... There was a touch of diabolic genius.
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Wolken stated, similarly, that, although told about
Auschwitz before being taken there by a Pole who had been to the camp, he and
his friends “did not want to believe him .... We said that he must not
have been there and that he is telling us fairy tales.”²
Nazi
doctors and others involved in the reception process varied |
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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 165 |
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