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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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213 |
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| Socialization to Killing |
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system. Thus Dr. Henri Q. could wisely urge me to
concentrate upon Nazi doctors’ relation to this system rather than upon a
single, infamous individual such as Mengele: “What impressed us was the
fact that Auschwitz was a collective effort. It was not just a single person,
but many. And the disturbing thing was that it was not something passionate
[irrational]. It was something calm — there was nothing emotional about
Auschwitz.”
Dr. Jacob R., in discussing Nazi doctors’
continuing function, stressed “this question of power — of having
uncontrolled power over somebody.” And in regard to the evil use of that
power, Dr. Tadeusz S. quoted Dr. Fischer as having told him, “We [Nazis]
have gone so far now that we have no way out.” There are two possible
implications here: the moral principle that the evil could not be undone; and
the psychological principle that, having maintained a death factory for a
period of time, one felt impelled to continue its function. The psychological
point is that atrocity begets atrocity: continuing to kill becomes
psychologically necessary in order to justify the killing and to view it as
other than it is.
That dynamic of living with the schism and the
numbness was, revealed also in what Dr. S. took to be later attitudes of Nazi
doctors: “Oh, they still live all over the world. They have no moral
problem. They are only unhappy that they lost the war.”
These last
few remarks by prisoner doctors suggest that the collective process of
medicalized killing was, psychologically and technically, self-perpetuating;
and that Nazi doctors found a way to engage in the process — the schism of
which I speak — with sufficient detachment to minimize psychological
discomfort and responsibility, then and over time. |
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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 213 |
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