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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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364 |
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| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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C., the radiologist, and Dr. Mlkios Nyiszli, the
pathologist. Nyiszli in particular attained enormous prestige in the camp and
could move about as he wished by invoking Mengele’s name. Before being
taken on, he was given an “examination” by Mengele on his knowledge
of pathology and forensic issues. The extent of his work with Mengele made him
a controversial figure in the eyes of some other prisoner doctors. But the
point here is the fact that the most important man on Mengele’s team was
the dissector of corpses.
Mengele even organized a series of colloquia,
usually involving about fifteen doctors working with him and ten or fifteen
brought in from other camps. Mengele would select the topic and run the
meeting, while prisoner doctors would be asked to discuss particular cases from
the standpoint of their specialties. Their discussion was tempered by their
awareness, as one put it, that “any of us could be sent off [killed] at
the slightest sign of displeasure on Mengele’s part.” While reluctant
to disagree with Mengele, they also had to consider the danger of being
associated with a false diagnosis (even if Mengele favored it) that could be
confirmed as false by post-mortem examination.
Mengele
was a collector. In accumulating dwarfs, as Dr. Lengyel put it, Mengele
had “the mania of a collector, not of a savant."43 Other prisoner doctors similarly saw him as an
endless collector who served as an instrument of his professor without
possessing any special qualities of his own as a scientist. (He was said to
have collected doctors as well. One prisoner doctor told a story of a large
group of Hungarian doctors [thought to [be about 380] that Mengele gathered in
late 1944; most of them were sent to a harsh working camp in Germany, where the
great majority became severely ill and debilitated, and many died.)
Mengele’s impulse to collect could be directed at any kind of
specimen — fetuses, as we know, and “very beautiful gallstones.”
as Dr Nyiszli tells us. Encountering the gallstones while dissecting a corpse
Nyiszli immediately thought of Mengele as “an ardent collector of such
items”: whether or not he had presented Mengele with such a gift before,
he knew it would be appreciated. He carefully washed and prepared them, and
Mengele’s response was not only pleasure but the recitation of lines from
a comic ballad of the warrior Wallenstein: |
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In the Wallenstein family
there are more
gallstones than precious stones.
[Im Besitze der Familie Wallenstein
Ist mehr Gallenstein, wie Edelstein. ] |
| The gallstones put Mengele in such a good mood that
Nyiszli could successfully request permission to go about the camp to look for
his wife and teenage daughter.44 |
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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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