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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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| Page
257 |
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| Killing with Syringes: Phenol Injections
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But rather than controlling epidemics, the widespread use
of phenol injections had the opposite effect. Hermann Langbein, who worked as
secretary to Wirths, told of informing the chief Auschwitz doctor that
“most of those who come into the hospital are not healed but are injected
[gespitzt].” Therefore, Langbein explained, “if one has a
headache and fever [the early symptoms of typhus], he does everything not to
have to go to the hospital …. That’s how typhus stays in the
camp.” Langbein knew he would be listened to because he was aware of
Wirths’s determination to fight typhus epidemics, having been ordered to
do so by Berlin. Langbein thought that Wirths seemed surprised and troubled by
this information about phenol injections, and when Wirths sought an explanation
from Entress, the responsible doctor, he was further deceived by the
latter’s claim that injections were being given only to incurable
tuberculosis patients — a lie that Wirths was apparently willing to accept
on the basis of the Berlin directive. Eventually Langbein was able to
demonstrate the truth of the matter to Wirths; and as a result, Langbein
suggested, the phenol injections decreased markedly and finally ceased
altogether (see page 387).9
Other
survivors have questioned during interviews how much influence these talks
between Langbein and Wirths could have had. At the time (late 1942)
Auschwitz’s schedule of killing had been relaxed to keep a maximum number
of prisoners working; and the increasing availability of the gas chambers and
crematoria had largely supplanted phenol injections for mass killing.10
While it is impossible to gauge the exact weight of these various factors, we
can assume that Langbein did have a certain influence precisely because his
message to Wirths (do something to stop mass phenol injections if you want to
stop the typhus epidemics) coincided with Wirths’s mission. (I shall have
more to say about the chief doctor’s healing-killing contradictions in
chapter 18.) |
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| The Injection
Procedure |
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The choice of killing substance and the injection
technique had a specific development in Auschwitz. There was considerable
experimentation with other substances — benzine, gasoline, hydrogen
peroxide, evipan, prussic acid (cyanide), and air — all injected into the
vein. The prisoner pathologist, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli (see pages 350-51), thought
he detected chloroform in his post-mortem examinations of four pairs of twins
put to death by Mengele, and believed that it was injected into the heart.11
Initially, phenol was injected into a
victim’s vein, maximizing the medical aura of the entire procedure. A
Polish non-Jewish prisoner doctor, |
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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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