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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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| Page
399 |
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| Healing-Killing Conflict: Eduard
Wirths |
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Reflecting back on the situation as an adult, she spoke of
“these two worlds, his family and this … job of his.” She felt
that his family “was the only thing that kept him going,” and that
“he desperately needed his family there to keep his sanity.” There
were certainly problems for Wirths and his wife when she was there: according
to Kremer, a confidant of Wirths viewed him as a man who “had all sorts of
trouble with his wife and children.”42
There was always a conflict between his "having his job there and his family
who weren't supposed to notice anything." Of course, with his family present,
he was able to notice less of Auschwitz. While it is also probably true that
there were moments when their presence intensified his awareness of his killing
function, even then he could, as we have seen, deflect the target of his
potential guilt onto his family, especially to his wife for exposing her to
such a place.
Over time, Auschwitz became a kind of home for Wirths,
even a sanctuary. Only at Auschwitz could he live with his wife and children,
at least for a time; only there could they have a “family home.”
Commenting on his “sniffling and coughing” in the cold of the camp in
late November, he once wrote: “In summer one ought to live in Auschwitz,
but in autumn and winter one ought to be at home.” In the same letter, he
expressed sadness that “a piece of wild romantic life” near Auschwitz
would be lost because of the reconstruction of a riverbed.43
He maintained his own domesticity in
Auschwitz and wrote sadly to his wife of the death of their dog Basco, who
“suffered a lot so I gave him Mo [morphine],” adding, “It is
good that he died; he was in the end blind in both eyes.”44 If one asks how it was possible for Wirths to
describe that incident without in any way associating it with Auschwitz
selections, the answer is that the psychological function of his
“euthanasia” of the dog provided an alternative source of moral
concern and thereby increased his numbing toward selections.
And about
two weeks before the appearance of Soviet troops, he invoked Auschwitz’s
advantages as a way of sympathizing with his wife’s sense of isolation:
“You are right, my love, that here one is in the midst of life, and that
you at home … can gather no experiences.” He then urged her to
“come again to me in Auschwitz when the Soviet offensive has
ended.”45 He had also written to his
brother Helmut to come to Auschwitz “because it would be more [safe] than
in Hamburg.” While there was geographical and military truth to that claim
(Hamburg was largely destroyed by Allied bombing, and Auschwitz hardly
touched), the psychological theme is that of the perpetrators’ sense of
sanctuary in the place where they have been wielding absolute power over life
and death. |
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| Father and Younger Brother |
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| Other family members, especially his father and his
younger brother, were also of great importance to Wirths in connection with
Auschwitz. The latter, encountering Wirths in Berlin soon after the latter had
arrived |
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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 399 |
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