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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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363 |
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| Dr. Auschwitz: Josef
Mengele |
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cruelty (which was usual) but in their extraordinary
scientific naïveté — or, one might more accurately say, their
scientific corruption.
Mengele was thought to have done
further research in a variety of areas, but unclear accounts make it difficult
in some cases to distinguish what actually took place from distortions or even
fantasy. Yet, in each case, he could have been somehow involved.
Eva C., for instance, on the whole an accurate and earthy observer,
told me with uncharacteristic hesitancy and confusion of a vast research unit
she was taken to, a special block in the Auschwitz main camp where people were
being experimented upon, some of them wearing a diver’s suit and lying in
water with ice in it. Mengele walked about quickly and: somewhat agitatedly,
giving orders in a way that showed that “he was very definitely the
top dog in there, too.” Other inmates were convinced that Mengele
performed sterilization experiments; and although he was clearly not a major
Auschwitz experimenter in this area, there were enough reports to suggest he
might have had some peripheral relationship to it. One survivor told me that
Mengele “cut off the balls” of a very young twin, and that he (this
witness), in fact, saw the testicles “lying on our table.” A Greek
survivor, one of whose testicles had been removed, appeared in court against
Schumann but held Mengele equally responsible and told of the latter’s
supervising the crude method of collecting sperm from males. Involved in
sterilization experiments. Other survivors told of injections Mengele gave or
ordered given in the abdomen that left one sterile.41 One woman told of an injurious substance being
injected into her back by an assistant of Mengele, resulting in loss of her
menstrual periods and inability to conceive. A survivor, whose fiancé
worked on Block 10, spoke of “medical research and experiments by the
notorious doctors Mengele and Clauberg” on that block."42 Another survivor told of bone-marrow
experiments, involving several operations on her thigh, with removal of
material for bone-marrow transplants. An international commission confirmed
that this woman had been subjected to medical experiments, and she was able to
locate another survivor victimized by the same kind of procedure.
My
belief is that each of these reports stems from some form of actual abuse,
usually experimental, even if there was some confusion in details, including
the question of which Nazi doctor was involved. Mengele’s unbridled
research interests, special Auschwitz energies, and extraordinary absence of
moral restraint made him a candidate for real acts that sound fantastic no less
than for unbridled fantasy.
Mengele set up an Auschwitz caricature of
an academic research institute. Doctors, mostly Jewish, with varied clinical
and laboratory backgrounds, were called upon to contribute to his work by
diagnosing and sometimes treating (when consistent with Mengele’s
interest) his research subjects. Key figures in confirming diagnoses were Dr.
Abraham |
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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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