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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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287 |
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| The Experimental Impulse |
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forearm.” Hirt himself disappeared at that time and is
now known to have killed himself shortly afterward.45
This museum project is remarkable for its merging of Himmler’s
racial vision with highly concrete, pseudo-scientific anthropological (Beger)
and medical (Hirt) participation — all a logical outgrowth of the Nazi
biological and political mentality.46 |
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| The Hygienic Institute:
Sanctuary and Taint |
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What were perhaps the oddest and most benign of the
experiments also took place on Block 10, in the section reserved for the work
of the Hygienic Institute — and yet that institute hardly escaped
Auschwitz evil.
Dr. Ernst B., whom I have frequently quoted concerning
Auschwitz events and attitudes, confused prisoner doctors with his experiments
relating dental infections to rheumatic and other bodily symptoms, and
involving the injection of vaccines made from these infections in order to test
a person’s sensitivity. Dr. Michael Z. thought Dr. B. lacked focus
(“[He] started a new project almost every day”) and castigated him
for having people’s teeth pulled as experimental treatment. Another
prisoner doctor similarly thought that Dr. B. was “amusing himself”
with these experiments. But Dr. Wanda J., who could observe these experiments
closely because of her position on Block 10, dismissed what Dr. B. was doing as
inconsequential “stupidity.” And referring to another aspect of his
experiments, the rubbing of certain substances onto the skin, Dr. J. pointed
out that it was easy to substitute plain water for the substance. More
important, she went on to say, she was able to “choose girls” for
these experiments instead of Clauberg’s; to relieve their fear, she would
rub the substance (usually just water) on herself “to show the girls that
it's nothing.”
Dr. B. made explicit his and his superior’s
intent, in creating the experiments, to rescue specific women (usually wives
and relatives of male prisoners who worked in the. Hygienic Institute) from
Clauberg’s unit, where they were likely to be harmed by experiments and
then sent to the gas chamber. Block 10 was generally Clauberg’s domain;
and in order to be able to continue to occupy space there, the Hygienic
Institute had to demonstrate to him that it was conducting “serious
experiments.” For that purpose Dr. B. arranged to produce by injection
large inflammations in the upper thighs of these women; he did his best to
explain to them that it was benign and necessary, but he was at the same time
aware that “this created the impression in the general camp that I was
involved in dangerous, life-threatening experiments.” He confirmed that
the experiments involved injection of vaccines made from tooth infections (of
other people) in order to test for positive reactions; and when these were
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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 287 |
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