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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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365 |
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| Dr. Auschwitz: Josef
Mengele |
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Mengele as Scientist
In exploring with
me Mengele’s attitude toward his research and toward science in general,
Teresa W. said: “In his scientific research he was honest … and
fanatic. He was a strange man.” The word “honest” expressed her
sense of the legitimacy of his method and of his having been a man with a
genuine “scientific background” who was “absolutely capable of
doing serious and appropriate scientific work.” His fanaticism was evident
to her in his behavior not only at the ramp but when attempting to preserve his
“research findings” at the time the camp was about to be liberated.
He became “completely mad-looking,” went desperately to his equipment
and papers, and "put everything — instruments, all [there] was, in this
trunk … paper, stationery, everything — pack, pack, terrific speed,
not a word spoken to us — nothing, no expression, … just shuffling
everything.” His assistant remembered him looking “like the man who
is flying under fear of something happening,” his face distorted and
seeming to have changed color, so that it was now “a very dark color, like
brown.”
As she probed the matter she became increasingly aware of
his potential for research distortion, and we have noted her sense that he
might “twist [results] a little bit to his aims.” Although she
insisted upon distinguishing him from a completely antiscientific racist like
Hans F.K. Günther — because Mengele “wanted to be . . . [and]
was” a scientist who “loved” scientific work — she
realized that he was “a little bit … limited” by his fanaticism.
That “little bit" turned out to be a great deal: |
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If you think that [the] German race, or any race,
is absolutely superior, and that means it has the right to destroy a weaker
race, that is already a limitation. … He [did]n’t like to think
[about or] … go deeply in[to a] problem [that] contradicts his own. [He
was like] a religious man … absolutely so committed that he will only
consider the people going to church as the right people — or [those who]
have the same face as he has. |
Struggling with the idea of such scientific distortion in
an intelligent anthropologist and “educated man,” Teresa W. could
only attribute it to Mengele’s conviction “that Hitler [was] doing
something absolutely incredibly good.”
Mengele saw himself as a
scientific investigator at large, ever on the alert for “interesting”
or “important” medical or anthropological material. Gisella Perl
tells of his strong interest in obtaining dead fetuses for study. On one
occasion, when she and a few friends were surprised by him while eating
illegally obtained food, she handled what she knew to be a situation of grave
danger by immediately calling his attention to an unusually, intact preserved
fetus: “Herr Hauptsturmführer may be inter- [… ested]
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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 365 |
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