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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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377 |
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| Dr. Auschwitz: Josef
Mengele |
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face.” And the rumors of his impotence, the
impression that he had “no sense for women” — whether or not
true, these reflected the prisoners’ strong impression of his general lack
of human feeling.
Sadism suggests pleasure in causing pain, and we have
seen many different expressions of that tendency in Mengele. Even his style of
dress and display could be understood as something close to sadism in that
environment. It is also what is frequently called “narcissism” —
in popular usage, extreme self-absorption, as opposed to the psychoanalytic
technical meaning of sexual energy (or “libido”) directed at
one’s own body or person. Of Mengele one has the impression that both his
“narcissism” and sadism were bound up with his profound impulse
toward omnipotence, toward total control of his environment, and
specifically the kind of life-death control available to an SS doctor in
Auschwitz.
Indeed, the importance of the Auschwitz environment in
activating all of these traits — schizoid tendencies, numbing, and the
sadism-omnipotence combination — cannot be overemphasized. Several
prisoner professionals emphasized that, were it not for Auschwitz, Mengele
could undoubtedly have followed a successful academic career. As Dr. Magda V.
put it, “In ordinary times he could have been a slightly sadistic German
professor.”
None of Mengele's behavior — least of all his
capacity to inflict pain and feel nothing for victims — can be understood
separately from his involvement in ideology. Unlike most SS doctors, Mengele
was a true ideologue: a man who understood his life to be in the service of a
larger vision. He undoubtedly viewed himself as a Nazi revolutionary, a man
committed to the bold task of remaking his people and ultimately the people of
the world. He and those like him differed from previous revolutionaries in
their invocation of biology: Mengele exemplified the Nazi biological
revolutionary. He was part of a vanguard that saw its mission as noble and
viewed courage and cruelty (or “hardness,” as the Nazis were fond of
saying) toward enemies or impediments of any kind as personal virtues. For a
man like Mengele, the ideological mission justified everything.
That is
why Dr. V. could call him “the most absolutely convinced Nazi among
them”; Dr. Lottie M. could speak of him as an "intellectual true
believer," capable of complaining about stupidity of individual SS personnel
"and yet believe in absurd ... [racial] theories"; Eva C. could say that
“next to Hitler he was the most convinced”; and Dr. O. could call him
“Hitler's robot.”
As his friend Dr. B. constantly stressed,
Mengele was an extreme anti-Semite. He viewed the Jews as a highly gifted
people who were locked in a life-and-death struggle with Aryan German. His
anti-Semitism was part of the broad ideological sweep of racial theory: Dr. B.
put it clearly when he said that Mengele “was fully convinced that the
annihilation of the Jews was a provision for the recovery of the world, and
Germany.” And Dr. Jacob R. understood Mengele as an SS mystic who believed
that “if all the Jews were annihilated, victory would come [of]
itself.” |
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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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