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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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431 |
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| The Auschwitz Self: Psychological
Themes |
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[or…] ganic renewal: the creation of a vast
“German biotic community” in which one can draw parallels between the
vast world-conquering German mission and the smallest physiological
intracellular system.¹ Even the term anus mundi can become
associated with a positive mission involving the principle of “the
necessity to sweep clean the world.”² The healing achieved by killing
could also become part of the immortalizing vision, of the “holiest
human right and … obligation,” which is “to see to it
that the blood is preserved pure and, by preserving the best humanity, to
create the possibility of a nobler development of these beings.”³
The Auschwitz self was the means by which the Nazi doctor could bring
to his killing the mana of a shaman, a priest, a magician. For in the case of
such an ancient healer, “there is no cleavage between the domain of
fantasy in which he acts and the world of affairs wherein his mystic acts are
efficacious.”4 In that way the Auschwitz
doctor-shaman becomes “loaded up with powers”5 in his deadly “healing” (see also pages
481-84). He is a recognized healer with special powers; his killing is
legitimated by, and at the same time further legitimates, the regime’s
overall healing-killing reversals. Thus it became quite natural to use a
vehicle marked with a red cross to transport gas, gassing personnel, and
sometimes victims, to the gas chambers.
Since the healing-killing
paradox epitomized the overall function of the Nazi regime, there was some
truth in the Nazi image of Auschwitz as the moral equivalent of war. War is the
only accepted institution (a highly honored one in the case of the Nazis) in
which there is a parallel healing-killing paradox. One has to kill the enemy in
order to preserve — to “heal” — one’s people,
one’s military unit, oneself. And if one follows the rules of war, one
also heals those among the enemy whom one has not quite killed but merely
wounded and captured. The “equivalent of war” image, with its claim
to courage and endurance, lends “honor” to the self. A Nazi doctor
could thus avoid a war in which his life would really be threatened (that on
the Russian front) but participate in a claimed moral equivalent of war in
which he faced no such danger. The analogy was furthered by the sea of death he
encountered and contributed to in Auschwitz. He could experience a
psychological equivalent of war, at moments feel' himself on “the
battlefield of the race war”6 On this
and many other issues, partial conviction could combine with rationalization.
Of the three Nazi doctors discussed in detail, Mengele was most in tune
with the healing-killing paradox; Wirths did most to maintain it but was least
at ease with it; and Ernst B. was at its periphery and for the most part able
to limit his activities to healing. But healing-killing perversions came to
define all of their outer and inner reality. We remember, for instance, Dr.
B.’s essential agreement with his friend Mengele’s insistence that
“it would be a sin, a crime” not to utilize the special opportunity
Auschwitz presented for research with twins; and B.’s further sympathy for
the Nazi doctor subjected to “Auschwitz conditions,” having to make
instant decisions during selections. His message is that the Auschwitz
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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 431 |
Forward |
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