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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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396 |
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| AUSCHWITZ THE RACIAL CURE |
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To an extraordinary extent, Wirths’s capacity for any
psychological equilibrium depended upon his ties to close family members,
especially to his wife. She and their first three children, then very young,
were with him in Auschwitz for some months, perhaps almost a year, in late 1943
through September 1944. Before and after that time, over the remainder of his
two-and-a-half years in Auschwitz, he wrote frequent long letters to her,
letters that were passionate, imploring, and often desperate. He invested his
wife and children — and that part of himself bound to them — with a
quality of absolute purity and goodness. And he clung to that purity and
goodness with the special intensity of a man being consumed by evil.
In
his first letter, written on 7 September 1942, just a day after his arrival in
Auschwitz, he immediately connects his love and duty toward wife and family
with his work in Auschwitz. Referring to the “superhuman” task he
must accomplish there, he says that all he does is “for you, my life, my
heart, for you and the children”; and that “nothing is impossible as
long as I have you, my beloved.” Indeed, he renders his Auschwitz task an
immortalizing project: dealing with a “wild country that requires much
work to be done, much German spirit, energy, and German work.” It will be
the work of pioneers not easy, but it must be done for our children, my angel,
for our children.”27
He
struggles to suppress initial shock and horror and quickly invokes destiny and
duty. He associates her “immensely great love” with the
“protective inoculations” he requires for the assignment.28 That is, their love is to inoculate him against
what he sees and does at Auschwitz. And once the ordeal is over, “then we
will be allowed to be true only to ourselves my love and this will be worth the
trouble.”29 At that time he will have
earned the full joy of their love by completing this Auschwitz responsibility.
Auschwitz becomes associated with an ennobling sense of German mission on
behalf of the absolute purity of his wife and children, an immortal mission on
behalf of the future.
In subsequent letters, he pours out an
endless series of endearments, including every kind of diminutive of her name:
“most beloved wife,” “dear soul,” “you my whole
heart,” “beloved little treasure,” “little birdy,”
“little Father Christmas,” and “Almighty One.” His
intensity is accompanied by a certain formality of structure (confirmed by
German readers): his endearments are absolute, but his style and phrasing are
far from uninhibited The endearments are accompanied by and in fact greatly
contribute to his struggle for control
During the last half of 1943, a
major theme in his letters is his joyful anticipation of his family’s
joining him in Auschwitz. Emanating from the death camp is an almost coy tone
of preparation as he describes the removal of piles of débris and the
ruins of an old cellar, and tells his wife that “for the last two days a
large Kommando has been working in our garden,” and that he has found an
architect “who makes very nice draw- [… ings] |
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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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Back |
Page 396 |
Forward |
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