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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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262 |
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| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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attempt to deceive Wirths by claiming that the large
number of patients he was having injected with phenol had all suffered from
tuberculosis. Entress also conducted, on 29 August 1942, one of the biggest
selections ever to take place on an Auschwitz medical block: he sent to the gas
chambers not only patients ill with typhus but many who were convalescing, and
also prisoner doctors and other medical personnel in no way ill.21 Dr. Jan W. told me that “on that memorable day,
Entress liquidated almost all of the patients of Block 20 because of typhus, as
well as seriously ill patients from other blocks — with diarrhea, or who
came from surgery or from the internal diseases block — as well as people
who were convalescing. This was his … method for getting rid of typhus in
the camp. … Entress did it all personally, with the help of SS
orderlies.”
Dr. W. estimated that Entress selected a total of one
thousand to twelve hundred people that day, again with a sanction from Berlin
interpreted in the most lethal way possible. One of those killed among the
convalescing patients was Dr. Bujalski, former director of the Polish Ministry
of Health. Dr. Bujaiski had asked to remain on the medical block to work there
and was said to have been told by Entress that he would be sent to a
convalescent ward or sanatorium where he would receive a replacement for the
stethoscope he realized he had left behind when entering the truck to take him
to the gas chamber.22 Entress was known not
only to be especially “radical” in his selections behavior but also
to be involved in experiments in which he infected prisoners with typhus in
order to make medical observations on its communicability.23
He was ruthless in his pursuit of
medical experience. He set up a tuberculosis ward for the purpose of learning
the technique of pneumothorax therapy (the introduction of air into the pleural
cavity in order to collapse a tubercular lung) under the tutelage of Wladyslaw
Tondos, a Polish prisoner physician and lung specialist. Only after Entress had
practiced that technique for sometime did he order phenol injections for the
entire ward. He also sought surgical experience under the guidance of Polish
prisoner surgeons, causing harm and death to a number of patients. He
particularly attached himself to Dr. Wladislaw Dering, an experienced surgeon
and fellow Polish ethnic German, and “trained” with Dering during the
latter’s surgical removal of ovaries and testicles of Jewish prisoners as
part of the sterilization and castration experiments (see pages 246-47).24
The phenol-injection project became a
major outlet for Entress’s medical radicalism. For the most part he
supervised the project in a detached fashion. He did perform some early
injections himself; but the general impression was that, in contrast to Bodman
and at times Mengele, Entress preferred to turn over the direct killing
function to others.
Polish prisoner doctors have provided a consistent
picture of Entress (his tenure in Auschwitz [1941-43] was mostly during a
period in which Jewish doctors were not yet permitted to work in the medical
blocks). One Polish doctor spoke of him as “a very cold person, …
without any |
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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 262 |
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