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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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275 |
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| The Experimental Impulse |
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“negative population policy,” about which he
makes the dramatic proposal that, having demonstrated the possibility of
sterilization without operation on the basis of animal experiments, “now
we must proceed to the first experiments on human beings.” The letter goes
on with this combination of flattery, slick scientific gloss, elaborate
research projection (a laboratory for animal experiments, an experimental farm
to investigate questions of “agriculture and fertility,” etc.), and a
pervasive medical focus (“The center from which all ideas start, all
problems are raised ... and finally turned over to practical use, is and
remains the clinic”) — all leading to the plan to “evaluate the
method of sterilization without operation … on women unworthy of
propagation and to use this method continually after it is finally proved
efficient.” He makes clear that Auschwitz is the ideal place for “the
human material to be provided,” and even proposes that it be named after
Himmler as “Research Institute of the Reichsführer SS for
Biological Propagation.” The entire letter captures much of the ethos and
corruption of the physician researcher within the Nazi biomedical vision.10
After a flurry of additional changes
involving Himmler’s adjutants and other SS doctors, and another visit with
the Reichsführer himself, Clauberg’s plan for Auschwitz work
was approved in a letter in which Himmler (through his assistant, Rudolf
Brandt) indicated that he would be “interested to learn … how long it
would take to sterilize a thousand Jewesses,” made some additional
suggestions about method, and finally advocated as a test “a practical
experiment [of] … locking up a Jewess and a Jew, together for a certain
period and then seeing what results are achieved.”11
Himmler’s enthusiasm for
Clauberg’s project had been independently nurtured by another physician
correspondent, Dr. Adolf Pokorny, a Czech ethnic German who had retired with a
high rank from a career in military medicine. In October 1941 Pokorny wrote a
letter to Himmler that could also stand as a basic document in the ideological
corruption of the healer. Pokorny’s letter was written in response to the
idea “that the enemy must not only be conquered but destroyed”; felt
impelled to notify Himmler of recent work on “medicinal
sterilization” in which the sap of a particular plant (containing
Caladium seguinum) produced “permanent sterility” in both male
and female animals; and advocated “immediate research on human beings
(criminals!)” as well as extensive cultivation of the plant and absolute
secrecy. Pokorny gloried in the vision of “a new powerful weapon at our
disposal”: "The thought alone that the 3 million Bolsheviks, at present
German prisoners, could be sterilized so that they could be used as laborers
but be prevented from reproduction, opens the most far-reaching
perspectives.”12* |
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* The letter earned Pokorny
a place in the dock at Nuremberg. He defended himself by pleading that
Caladium seguinum was so clearly unsuitable for human sterilization that
he had written Himmler to divert him from considering more feasible methods.
The court ruled that the letter, “monstrous and base as ... [its]
suggestions . . are,” did not justify a conviction, and concluded,
“We find, therefore, that the defendant must be acquitted — not
because of the defense tendered, but in spite of it.”
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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 275 |
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