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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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230 |
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| Prisoner Doctors: Struggles to
Heal |
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does not affect you.” Moreover, “he who could not
get this [psychic 'immune reaction] died.” Nor could one, when confronted
with selections, surrender the bond with Nazi doctors so necessary to
one’s own life and to one’s capacity to save others.
While
the bond was precarious in the extreme, and prisoner doctors never fully lost
their image of all Auschwitz Nazis as murderers, there were some exceptionally
positive relationships — for example, between a few prisoner doctors and
two SS doctors in the Auschwitz Hygienic Institute, Ernst B. and Delmotte G.
Several survivor doctors made clear to me that these two SS doctors were
genuinely considerate to them, helped arrange illegal meetings with wives or
family members in the camp, and could be trusted with personal confidences. But
even in those unusual cases, prisoner doctors could hardly be completely
relaxed.
Sometimes a Nazi doctor used such relationships for a kind of
catharsis, for expressing (though hardly confronting) his feelings of guilt
derived from participating in selections. Dr. Jan W., the Polish prisoner
physician, described Werner Rohde (whom several inmates considered relatively
decent) to be a "kind of German Bosch,* ... more sociable [than other
Nazi doctors]," and a man who treated prisoner doctors “more as fellow
physicians.” In addition, |
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he [Rohde] sometimes even told of dreams that he
had the previous night. I'll tell you about one of those dreams. He came in one
day and told us, “What a dream I had last night. It was a terrible dream.
I dreamt that [I saw] fried Jewish heads — Jewish heads on a frying
pan.” This was immediately after a selection in which a large number of
people were gassed and burned |
Rohde’s dream probably reflected a combination of
guilt feelings, death anxiety, and a degree of sadism. Such a confession could
be made only to Polish or possibly German prisoner doctors. But this apparent
freedom did not mean that they could be casual in their response to the SS
doctor’s catharsis.
The ostensible colleagueship with the SS
doctor could be perceived as entrapment. One prisoner doctor told how Klein
would sometimes address him as “Herr Kollege” or “Herr Doktor
Kollege,” how “friendly” and “very kind” Klein was,
and how Fischer, Klein, and Rohde “were quite normal to us” and
“talked medicine with us.” This man’s point was that he and
other prisoner doctors were manipulated and exploited in the
relationship: |
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They didn’t lash us. No, not at all. There
was no need for them to do it because we were very obedient. We were slaves.
You always stood to attention [here he clicked his heels and brought himself to
attention |
__________
* Bosch was a First World
War derogatory term for a German but here also suggests a rough-hewn,
spontaneous person. |
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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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