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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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90 |
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| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
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people if there were a proper law). She admitted that until
then she had had “steadfast confidence in our Führer,” but now
she could feel “the ground ... give way beneath our feet,” though
“people are still clinging to the hope that the Führer does not yet
know of these things.” The judge forwarded the letter to Himmler, who
informed him “confidentially” that there was such a program, “on
the authority of the Führer,” being carried out by “medical
experts ... conscious of their responsibilities” ; and that, if the
project had become well known, “the manner of operating [was] at
fault.”29
Indeed, angry crowd
reactions came close at times to public demonstrations against the killing of
mental patients. One report to the SS Security Service from Absberg on 1 March
1941 states that “the removal of residents from the Ottilien Home has
caused a great deal of unpleasantness,” tells of a priest offering
communion to patients forced into a bus before large crowds of Catholic
townspeople, complains of the visibility of the whole operation, describes how
deeply troubled people were, and adds that “among those upset and crying
are Party members. ”30 This was one of
the few issues on which sentiment against a regime policy was so openly and
bitterly, expressed. |
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| Resistance from the
Churches |
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Much of Protestant religious resistance centered on mental
institutions; two leaders were pastors who served as nonmedical administrators
of such institutions. These were Paul-Gerhard Braune, director of the
Hoffnungstal Institution in Berlin and vice president of the central board of
the Home Mission; and the Reverend Fritz von Bodelschwingh, director of the
legendary Bethel Institution, mainly for epileptics, at Bielefeld. Both were
active leaders of the Confessional Church, as opposed to “German
Christians" who had allied themselves to the National Socialist regime. Both
pastors also belonged to the group within the Confessional Church who believed
that "where an institution was threatened by the killing, one should fight for
the lives of the patients [against], those who were to take them away to have
them killed” — rather than speaking out from the pulpit about the
evil of the “euthanasia” project and its violation of God’s
commandments. The latter course, they feared, might harm the cause of actual
patients.31
Bodelschwingh’s
institution at Bethel, initiated by his father, was renowned for creating a
dedicated and harmonious Christian community. In that atmosphere Bodelschwingh
could command the loyalty of his psychiatric physicians — including
Jasperson — to join him in resistance to questionnaires, in expressing
objections to Nazi officials, and in various maneuvers to keep patients from
being drawn into the killing machin- […ery] |
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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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