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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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321 |
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| “A Human Being in an SS
Uniform”: Ernst B. |
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| Friendship with Mengele |
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How much he was one of them is revealed in his
relationship to Mengele, which leads us to the heart of Ernst B.’s own
moral and psychological ambiguity. During our first interview, while discussing
the intensity of his involvement in Auschwitz to the point of his not acting on
an opportunity to leave, he spontaneously said to me, “I had very good
contact with Mengele. Have you ever heard the name Mengele?” And that was
when he declared, “I really must say that he was the most decent colleague
I met there.” During our five interviews together, over a two-year period,
Dr. B. retreated not an inch from that startling judgment. He always warmed to
the subject, intent on correcting what he took to be widespread
misunderstandings about, the man and what he represented in Auschwitz. It was
wrong to talk about Mengele as the “typical SS doctor,” B. insisted;
rather, Mengele was “the exception,” separate from the older group
long associated with the camps, independent in attitude, and “on principle
opposed to the system of the, concentration camps.” B. pictured Mengele,
Weber, and himself as having much in common: Weber critical of the
extermination of the Jews; Mengele equally critical of the extermination of the
Polish intelligentsia; and B. becoming aware that Mengele’s “general
evaluation of the camp was quite similar to [B.’s own].”
Dr.
B. and Mengele had much else in common — as doctors in their early
thirties with a similar upper-middle-class family background, and as Bavarians
with traditional antipathy to Prussians. More than that, Dr. B. remembered
Mengele as “helpful,” “a really fine comrade” (sehr
kameradschaftlicher; literally, “very comradely”), and admirable
in his open expression of “outspoken antipathies and sympathies [for
people].”
When I brought up the question of Mengele’s human
experiments, B. sprang to the defense of his friend: human experiments were
“a relatively minor matter” in Auschwitz; children (who made up most
of the twins Mengele studied) had little chance to survive in Auschwitz,but
Mengele made certain they were well fed and taken care of; Mengele sought a
better diet for patients on medical blocks and fought the corruption that
siphoned off their food; wild rumors and fantasies developed about Mengele
because he worked in a special room that others were forbidden to enter. And
when I asked B. whether he would change his views if I presented him with
extensive evidence of Mengele’s practice of occasionally sending one or
both twins to the gas chamber, B. answered unhesitatingly in the negative
“because under the conditions of Auschwitz one must always say that
Mengele’s experiments were not forms of cruelty.” In defense of
Mengele, he repeatedly invoked the “conditions of Auschwitz” or the
“Auschwitz atmosphere.” That is, since one had the opportunity to
perform “kinds of experiments that could not be made in a normal
world,” Mengele “did just the type of scientific research that was
possible under the specific conditions of the camp.” Moreover, Mengele
“assured” his friend that he “most [B.’s emphasis]
carefully prevented them |
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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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