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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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| Page
175 |
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| Selections on the Ramp |
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killed. Wirths and Höss constantly consulted about
such matters, and there was known to be considerable disagreement and tension
between the two men. Wirths constantly sought better medical facilities, while
Höss was preoccupied with facilities for maximum efficiency in mass
murder. According to Dr. B., they conferred on many things, including
especially those that could “go wrong.”
One of the things
that could go wrong was for officers other than physicians to conduct
selections illegally: either because they represented the Reich Security
(police) position (Eichmann) and wanted to see all Jews killed, or because they
represented the views of the economic and administrative division and wanted to
keep as many Jews as possible alive for work. Höss claimed that medical
authority supported his own police position of maximum killing: |
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The Reichsarzt SS [Grawitz] … held
the view that only those Jews who were completely fit and able to work should
be selected for employment. The weak and the old and those who were only
relatively robust would very soon become incapable of work, which would case a
further deterioration in the general standard of health, and an unnecessary
increase in the hospital accommodation, requiring further medical personnel and
medicines, and all for no purpose since they would in the end have to be killed
. . . .
I myself held the view that only really strong and healthy
Jews ought to be selected for employment.14 |
The conflict within the SS was never fully resolved. In
way, it did not have to be. Advocates of maximum murder could take satisfaction
in the killing of overwhelming numbers of arriving Jews; selections provided
the slave-labor advocates with their slaves. And doctors’ recommendations
were met by both tendencies: the extensive killing prevented overcrowding; and
the selections, by providing stronger inmates, eased the doctors’ task of
maintaining the health of the inmate population.
They could in fact
come to see their physician’s task, as Dr. B. said, as rendering the
killing “humane”: "The discussion [among doctors] was about how the
matter could be carried out humanely [die Sache human
durchgeführt]. That was the problem of the physician .... The
discussion about the possibility of humanity [in killing], . . . [of]
humanitarian [methods in the face of] ... the general overload of the apparatus
— that was the problem.” |
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| “A Regular Job” |
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| The selections became simply “a part of their
life,” as a prisoner doctor, Jacob R. commented to me. And Dr. B., too,
noted that, whatever reservations SS doctors had at first, they soon viewed
selections as “normal duty,” as “a regular job.” Indeed
within the Auschwitz atmosphere, |
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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 175 |
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