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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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387 |
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| Healing-Killing Conflict: Eduard
Wirths |
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patients. He also improved conditions on the medical
blocks, extended the work of Polish prisoner physicians who had been in
Auschwitz for some time, and began to permit the large numbers of arriving
Jewish physicians to do medical work as well. All this was consistent with
overall SS policies of maintaining a work force in Auschwitz; and Langbein
found it possible to appeal to Wirths on policies that could save lives by
presenting a case “from a purely medical point of view.”7
For instance, he persuaded Wirths to take
steps to end the fatal phenol injections by pointing out that they made it
impossible to maintain anti-typhus medical measures because prisoners, becoming
fearful of the sick block, avoided it even when afflicted and thereby infected
others (see page 257). Once convinced, Wirths had the two people most
responsible for the injections transferred from the medical block: Entress, the
SS physician who ordered most of them; and Klehr, the noncommissioned officer
who performed more of the injections than anyone else.8
Wirths was also protective of prisoner
doctors and other prisoners doing medical work. On one occasion he was heard to
castigate Irma Grese, the notorious woman SS officer, with the words “Do
not beat my people!” when he found her whipping a prisoner who worked on
the medical block. And when a prisoner chief of Block 10 insisted upon beating
other prisoners, Wirths not only removed her but gave unprecedented authority
to the Jewish prisoner doctor he had appointed to run the medical block.9
Wirths exercised his medical autonomy in
a confrontation with the Auschwitz Gestapo head, Maximilian Grabner.
Grabner’s Political Department maintained a prison in the basement of
Block 11, periodically had inmates shot at the “Black Wall” in the
courtyard between blocks 11 and 10, and would then officially report those
victims as having died of some illness in the infirmary. Upon learning of this
system (with Langbein’s help), which considerably elevated the recorded
death rate in the medical blocks, Wirths got angry and declared, “The
Political Department has to take responsibility for its own dead.” Since
it turned out that Entress and Klehr had again been part of the arrangement,
especially through Entress’s close connection with the Gestapo, their
transfer helped solve this problem as well. The matter emerged during Konrad
Morgen’s celebrated SS investigation of Auschwitz corruption (see pages
138-39): the judge backed Wirths since killings at the Black Wall, unlike those
in the gas chamber, were not considered legal. Morgen also supported Wirths in
opposing Grabner’s urging that pregnant Polish women be killed. In these
struggles against Grabner and other Auschwitz enemies, Wirths anchored himself
in medical propriety but at the same time scrupulously adhered to rules and
regulations.10
Wirths used his
medical authority in other ways to save lives. At Gestapo trials held in
Auschwitz, he frequently testified to the medical capacity of an accused,
usually a Polish civilian, to perform useful work, thereby arguing for the
prisoner to be allowed to enter the camp as an |
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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 387 |
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