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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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180 |
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Contents |
Index |
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| Chapter 9 |
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| Selections in the
Camp |
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A doctor was not a doctor. A doctor was the selection. That was what
the doctor was — the selection. |
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—Auschwitz survivor |
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| General Camp
Selections |
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Selections could take place virtually anywhere in the camp
including of course the medical blocks. We may designate as “general camp
selections” (or simply as “camp selections”) those that took
place anywhere but in the medical areas. General camp selections could take
place on one or more blocks, or in front of the various blocks (sometimes at
roll call), or at work Kommandos (often when setting out in early morning), or
at any gathering place of the camp. They varied in size from tens to hundreds
of people taken from a relatively small area of the camp, to thousands of
people from a larger camp unit. Here, too, only Jews were selected.
Like all selections, these were part of the overall equilibrium between
extermination and work productivity — part of what I have called the
Auschwitz ecology. And they, too, were influenced by “hygienic”
considerations within the camp — namely, the drain on “health”
facilities and the danger of epidemic created by relatively large numbers of
Muselmänner, or extremely emaciated prisoners. Although general
policies were handed down from above, there was considerable room for variation
and creative improvisation from below.
The fact that the basic
Auschwitz policy of killing inmates unable to work began with an order (in May
1942) from Enno Lolling, chief physician of the concentration camps, suggests
high-level medical participation in the implementation of the selections
policy.¹ And we know of significant medical involvement in its formulation
as well. In any case, that policy of killing ostensibly weak inmates was
pursued so ruthlessly during the next eighteen months (the last half of 1942
and all of 1943) that frequent additional directives were issued warning that
enough prisoners |
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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 180 |
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