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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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XI |
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Contents |
Index |
Home
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Forward |
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| Foreword |
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Soon after I completed my earlier study of atomic bomb
survivors, a rabbi friend visited me and in the course of our conversation
declared, “Hiroshima is your path, as a Jew, to the Holocaust.” The
comment made me uneasy, and I thought it a bit pontifical, even for a rabbi.
Yet from that time (the late 1960s) I had my own strong sense that I
would, before too long, attempt some form of study of Nazi genocide. All of the
work I had done on “extreme situations” — situations of massive
violence to bodies and minds — seemed to point, professionally and
personally, to such a study. Friends and students provided affectionate
prodding, and without any clear plan, the idea took on for me a certain
inevitability.
At several conferences on the Holocaust I made
presentations on the psychology of the survivor, but came to the conviction
that what was now most needed was a study of perpetrators. No wonder, then,
that I was more than ready when I received a call from an editor (who had
worked with me on my Hiroshima book) asking whether I would like to look over
some documents he had been sent on Josef Mengele and Auschwitz medical
practices. From those documents, and an immersion into related writings, I
began to realize the extraordinary importance of doctors in general for the
Nazi killing project. While the work was to extend far beyond those first
materials, it was for me already under way.
Though I had little
hesitation in proceeding, a few people I talked to expressed certain
misgivings. “I hope you have a strong stomach!” was a comment I
frequently heard. Some went on to make a compelling case for leaving the whole
subject alone. Their argument was that Nazi evil should merely be recognized
and isolated: rather than make it an object of study, one should simply condemn
it. Psychological study in particular, it was feared, ran the risk of replacing
condemnation with “insights.” Those misgivings gave me pause and
forced me to look at some difficult personal and philosophical issues.
I had no doubt about the reality of Nazi evil. But I could now be more
clear that the purpose of my psychological project was to learn more about,
rather than replace, precisely that evil. To avoid probing the sources of that
evil seemed to me, in the end, a refusal to call forth our capacity to engage
and combat it. Such avoidance contains not only fear |
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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 XI |
Forward |
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