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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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347 |
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| Dr. Auschwitz: Josef
Mengele |
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was evoked in him,” and told of two girls for whom she
successfully intervened with him. Mengele undoubtedly derived psychological
satisfaction from such incidents — all the more because he did not
necessarily have to alter his basic policies: the two girls in question were
sent to the gas chamber a short time later.
Another woman, in her teens
when she arrived, told of a sequence of one of Mengele’s acts of rescue:
her responding to her mother’s plea to join her in the line of the living;
becoming sick on the hospital block, where “Dr. Mengele visited me
daily” and “gave the order to treat me well”; and finding out
additionally from the prisoner doctor that “Dr. Mengele was very
interested in me and I should definitely return to my block the next day [and
that] there he wouldn’t look for me [for selection].”24 Undoubtedly with the help of distortions and
imagined attitudes, this woman saw Mengele as a combination of omnipotent
rescuer and concerned physician. (On occasion he even examined and treated
prisoner patients, rare for SS doctors.)
Or one could be rescued by the
God figure’s own cough: a woman remembered that Mengele’s slight
cough had come just at the moment he was to evaluate her, permitting her to
move quickly ahead to what she had perceived to be the line of the living.25 |
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| Direct Killing |
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Mengele could also kill directly. He was observed to
perform phenol injections, always with a correct medical demeanor. He seemed to
Dr. Marek P. to be always intent upon improving the killing system and upset at
others’ inefficiency: “He was infuriated by seeing the whole long
line of people waiting [and] would take the syringe and show them [SDG
personnel or prisoners performing the phenol injections] how to do it
faster.” Mengele himself administered the injections “without
speaking,” and “as though he were performing regular surgery …
without showing any emotion at all.”
Mengele also shot a number of
prisoners and was reported to have killed at least one by pressing his foot on
a woman’s body. And there were additional reports of his having thrown
newborn babies directly into the crematoria or open fires.26
In selecting for death or in killing
people himself, the essence of Mengele was flamboyant detachment — one
might say disinterestedness — and efficiency. |
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| Research on Twins |
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| Though usually cool and detached in his killing, Mengele
was passionate in conducting his research, particularly his study of twins.
Indeed, he probably came to Auschwitz for that purpose. He had apparently
worked with twins under Verschuer at the University of Frank- […furt]
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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 347 |
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