|
|
 |
| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
|
|
| Page
354 |
Back |
|
Contents |
Index |
Home
Page |
|
Forward |
|
| |
| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
| |
mentioned having been the assistant of a world-famous
Polish anthropologist. Mengele arranged for her to have the best treatment
available, and with her beginning recovery sent for her even though she was
“so weak that [she could] not really walk,” because he was “in
such a hurry” to put her to work for him.
As did the twins,
W. felt that the work offered her a sanctuary from more dangerous alternatives,
and that in Auschwitz “Mengele was a god.” She said that Mengele
never had a “private conversation” with her or even talked about her
professor, was polite but distant, and would only discuss the work. He would
sometimes gently question her descriptions of bodily characteristics, all the
while taking pains to provide her with the most comfortable arrangements
available to prisoners. An attractive young woman with an elegant cultural
background, she inspired rumors in Auschwitz that she and Mengele were having
an affair. They almost certainly were not, but. the rumors were probably fed by
Mengele’s pattern of both appreciation and generous reward of those who
could contribute to his passionate involvement in twin research.
Partly because of her overestimation of the quality and
legitimacy of the research, Teresa W. made a jarring discovery one day in
Auschwitz. Asked by Mengele to carry a box to another part of the camp, she
felt an impulse to open it and see what was inside, only to discover “that
it contained glass jars in which were human eyes.” She was "deeply
shaken”: “At that moment I realized that Mengele was obviously able
to kill people, in order to obtain some sort of research results.” Yet so
much did she believe in the research that she made copies of all the forms she
filled out in order to preserve her own record of the work; she buried, these
forms in jars under the block “until. such a moment [when] I can dig them
up” — but she never recovered them. She contrasted what Mengele would
do with the material with the more objective, statistical approach of her
professor. Mengele she thought, would have kept alive his “stud”
(groups of twins and their offsprings) in order to study the inheritance of a
variety of characteristics from intelligence to capacity for certain kinds of
knowledge to susceptibility to illnesses — all of which she thought could
give Mengele “a quite interesting result.”
During her
talks with me (spread out over a couple of years) she became more critical of
Mengele as “fanatical” and “murderous,” but remained
confused by him partly because of her continuing respect for the work. She was
one of the few prisoners I know of who remained loath to make definitive
judgments about him and was reluctant to testify about him in legal
proceedings. Her attitude was surely influenced by his having saved her life
but also by his professional approach to her and his having convinced her of
the validity of the work with twins.
Mengele’s own
attitude toward the twins research was fiercely enthusiastic. Dr. Lottie M.
stressed how passionately involved Mengele was with “his genetic
idea,” and a Polish woman survivor told how he “rushed |
|
| |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
|
Back |
Page 354 |
Forward |
|
|
