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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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454 |
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| THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE |
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But these two “humanitarians” were undoubtedly
more concerned about the well-being of the killers. The psychological
difficulties experienced by the Einsatzgruppen in face-to-face killing
(see pages 159-62) were also met by a form of medical technicism. The
Wehrmacht neuropsychiatrist who had treated these psychological
difficulties in Einsatzgruppen troops, described them to me — the
general manifestations of anxiety, including anxiety dreams — in the most
detached clinical tones. When I asked him whether he had ever
experienced anxiety dreams in response to all this killing or to his treating
the killers, he answered that he had not: “I never killed anybody”;
and, “As doctors … we were outsiders.” It also became clear that
he and his colleagues did not alter their medical approach in any significant
way when treating these “killer troops” (as he called them during our
interviews), but simply did what they could to relieve symptoms and help the
men to return to duty. He would even sometimes gently warn them, “Be
careful now, you’re complaining but you’re well.” He was trying
to suggest to me that, in doing so, he was considering the interests of the
individual killer soldier. But there was no doubt that he was playing the role
of the physician suspicious of malingering, who insisted upon holding to
strictly medical criteria in decisions concerning sending these men back to
duty where they could continue their killing. The extreme medical-psychiatric
technicism here has two dimensions: first, the use of one’s specialized
knowledge for the sake of the command structure of one’s military unit,
whose function even ordinarily is the killing of enemy soldiers; and the
special feature here that the “duty” to which patients were returned
had nothing to do with war and its rules but was simply that of murdering Jews.
One was returning them to an atrocity-producing situation in the extreme, to a
form of duty where atrocity was not only likely in the average case but was
precisely one’s assignment (see page 15).
The more crude forms of
killing in Nazi camps described by Ernst B. as being on the level of a
“handicraft” could be seen as intermediate stages in the shift from
primitive Einsatzgruppen to sophisticated Auschwitz killing. The
evidence suggests that the doctors were active at all levels, and that they
contributed their professional knowledge all through the improving
technological sequence, culminating in what Dr. B. called the
“perfection” of Auschwitz. Examples here include doctors’
important role in 14f13 connections between “euthanasia” killing and
death camps and the early role of doctors in the development of Zyklon-B gas,
though we know that the gas itself and its applicability to the killing of
human beings were discovered by nonmedical technical experts. The importance of
this medical-technological stance to the Auschwitz self is suggested by
B.’s statement that when a doctor’s specific suggestion for improving
the efficiency of the crematorium turned out to be successful, “he was
just as pleased about it as [any doctor would be] after a well-performed
[surgical] operation.” Here professional pride merges into German cultural
preoccupation with individual and organizational efficiency. That |
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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 454 |
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