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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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380 |
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| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE
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When Hochhuth wrote of his Mengele figure as “only
playing the part of a human being,” he was trying to simplify Nazism by
constructing a figure of such pure evil as to no longer belong to the category
of human being. Such an exemplar distills and clarifies evil, and we know
enough about Mengele to affirm his qualifications for the category. But even
Mengele ha shown too many familiar facets of human behavior for one to leave
him in that legendary role and, with Hochhuth, “[refrain] from any further
effort to plumb [his] human features.”57
I have made clear my rejection of the legend of pure ahuman evil, clarifying as
it may be, in favor of a commitment to probing motivations and behavior. I
return to the legend now only to explore more about Mengele’s function as
the ideal candidate for this cult of demonic personality.
At moments in
Auschwitz, prisoner doctors felt it necessary to divest Mengele of his
physician's status: “He was a monster, period, no more doctor than
anything else,” was the way Dr. Abraham C. put it, “a monster and
… only evil or calamities could come from him.”
A woman
survivor conveyed some of Mengele’s aura when she said, “He
represents what this [Auschwitz] represents to us” : that is, Mengele is
Auschwitz. Another spoke of him as “so terrifying” that he was
“more like an abstraction.” To convey Mengele’s meaning for her,
she read to me a short story she had written, based on a childhood memory, and
involving her unsuccessful attempt, as a little girl, to placate and please the
male bully who had been terrorizing her and other Jewish children. Afterward
she concluded "Mengele was feared … was admired. We tried to please him,
… almost like seducing [someone].” Mengele’s style of
omnipotence, then, produced both terror and a measure of admiration, a
combination that serves a legend well, but from which individuals have great
difficulty extricating themselves.
Adding to Mengele’s aura was
the mythology of his escape. There was the false rumor that he “had caught
typhus when the camp was liberated”: "While he was convalescing, he
escaped.”58 Actually he left before the
liberation, but the mythology continues in relation to the places where he is
thought to have been seen after leaving Auschwitz — Ravensbrück,
Dachau, a small camp in Czechoslovakia — whatever the accuracy of any of
these identifications The escape legend is extended by his apparent contempt
for postwar authority — and for justice, in living for years in his home
in the vicinity of Günzberg where he was protected by local officials and
family influence, by his subsequent exploits in South America, including
practicing medicine under various names in different places, disappearing just
in time to prevent extradition from Argentina to West Germany, advising
dictators (such as General Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, who is of German
descent) on such matters as annihilating their local Indian populations; by his
outsmarting a youthful female Israeli spy who attempted to seduce him in order
to lure him into death or capture, and was herself found murdered; by rumors of
his involvement in an extensive drug trade run by Nazis throughout South
America and |
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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 380 |
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