|
|
 |
| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
|
|
| Page
94 |
Back |
|
Contents |
Index |
Home
Page |
|
Forward |
|
| |
| “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE”: THE
GENETIC CURE |
| |
comparison to the end .... We are not talking
here about a machine, a horse, nor a cow .... No, we are talking about men and
women, our compatriots, our brothers and sisters. Poor unproductive people if
you wish, but does this mean that they have lost their right to
live? |
| |
He pointed out that, should such a principle be maintained,
“then think of the horrible state we shall all be in when we are weak and
sick!” The danger extended not only to “invalids” who, when
healthy, had been hard and productive and productive workers and “brave
soldiers, when they come back seriously wounded,” but "none of us here
will be certain of his life.”46
And after a couple of poignant examples of specific people killed, the
bishop concluded, as he had begun, with Biblical imagery, this time not of
Jesus weeping but of “divine justice” — ultimate punishment
— for those “making a blasphemy of our faith” by persecuting
clergy and “sending innocent people to their death.” He asked that
such people (who could only be the Nazi authorities) be ostracized and left to
their divine retribution: |
| |
We wish to withdraw ourselves and our faithful
from their influence, so that we may not be contaminated by their thinking and
their ungodly behavior, so that we may not participate and share with them in
the punishment which a just God should and will pronounce upon all those who
— like ungrateful Jerusalem* — do not wish what God wishes!47
|
| |
With the authority of his office, a Catholic bishop
invoked the wrath of God on those who were killing the innocent. This powerful,
populist sermon was immediately reproduced and distributed throughout Germany -
indeed, it was dropped among German troops by British Royal Air Force flyers.
Galen’s sermon probably had a greater impact than any other one statement
in consolidating anti-“euthanasia” sentiment; hence, Bormann’s
judgment that the bishop deserved the death penalty.48†
Perhaps still more threatening to
Nazi leaders was the protest of Werner Mölders, a Catholic
Luftwaffe pilot and famous war hero who had |
__________
* Galen’s image of
“ungrateful Jerusalem” contains a troubling irony in its apparent
reference to the Jews (as having violated God's wishes in rejecting Jesus). The
image could well refer more broadly to any tendency to stray from God’s
wishes throughout Judeo-Christian experience; it nonetheless suggests the kind
of sentiment within German-Christian doctrine and expression that enabled that
clergy to virtually ignore Nazi persecution of Jews.
† Bormann was
responding to a Nazi propaganda leader who suggested Galen be hanged. However,
Bormann added that “under the circumstances of war the Führer will
hardly order this measure.” The propagandist responded the same day with a
report of a conversation with Josef Goebbels, who had no answer on how to
combat Galen; the propaganda chief feared that, if something were done to the
bishop, the population of Münster could be “written off” for the
duration, and that “one could easily add to that all of Westphalia.”
A memorandum within the Propaganda Ministry on 12 August warned that taking
measures against Galen would create a martyr, and other bishops and priests
would take up the charges. Father Bernard Lichtenberg, however, unique in his
condemnation of Nazi persecution of Jews, was taken into custody and badly
beaten; he died in transit to Dachau.49 |
|
| |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
|
Back |
Page 94 |
Forward |
|
|
