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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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270 |
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Contents |
Index |
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| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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| direct extension of the biomedical vision, but also mention
other forms of experimentation and scientific enterprise, including the
establishment of a museum collection of Jewish skulls provided by Auschwitz.
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| Block 10 |
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The center for these experimental projects was the
notorious Block 10, a place that could be considered to be quintessential
Auschwitz. Made up mostly of women prisoners, it was located in the men's camp,
and the windows were kept closed and shuttered or boarded so that communication
with the outside was totally cut off. One woman prisoner doctor who spent a
year there described how, from the first night, she gained a lasting impression
of having been transferred to a “horror place” that resembled both
hell and a mental institution. And if one could peek out, one would witness
executions, prisoners being shot to death in the courtyard of the infamous
Block 11.
At the same time, inmates on the block were completely
vulnerable to visits and surveillance of various kinds by SS doctors and, on
occasion, by nonmedical officers: “A continuous coming and going of SS
….[so that] we never felt safe.” For any visit could mean new danger,
and inmates therefore “awaited with impatience … the evening when we
would be locked up as animals in a cage but … nonetheless felt
freer.”¹
Another woman prisoner doctor, Adelaide Hautval,
told of the five hundred women “guinea pigs,” all Jewish, from
various countries in Europe, who were usually selected directly from
transports, according to the needs of the Nazi physician experimenters:
“Some required married women, others young girls, a third a mixture of all
the categories.” Overall conditions were superior to those in the
women’s camp, because there the “guinea pigs … would have died
before the results of the experiments could have been assessed.” Inmates
suffered from hunger, nonetheless, and from the constant uncertainty about
“What will it be this time?” For they had absorbed the Auschwitz
principle that anything is permitted. At the same time the women deeply feared
a transfer to Birkenau where they knew death was more likely, because in Block
10 there was at least a hope that “maybe they will still let us live after
this,” though few believed that possible.²
The block was
divided into separate research areas: those of Professor Clauberg Professor
Schumann (both sterilizers), Dr. Wirths and his brother (who studied
pre-cancerous growths of the cervix) and a special area for studies conducted
by the Hygienic Institute.
Inevitably, there was a dimension of
Auschwitz schizophrenia: in this case, the twenty-two prostitutes — mostly
Germans, Poles, and Russians — the only non-Jewish residents of Block 10.
On Himmler's orders, the SS opened bordellos at Auschwitz and other camps.
Available to élite |
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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 270 |
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