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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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226 |
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Contents |
Index |
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| Chapter 12 |
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Prisoner Doctors:
Struggles to Heal |
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One day I broke the syringe. I was terrified. It was a much worse
crime to break a syringe than to kill a man. A syringe was worth more than a
human life. |
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— Auschwitz prisoner doctor |
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Our pride my pride is to have been able to remain human there . . . .
I believe we remained doctors in spirit in spite of everything . .
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— Auschwitz prisoner doctor |
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| "On a Certain Level
Collegial" |
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Yet the prisoner doctors’ impulse to heal persisted
impressively. That impulse, in fact, bound them to SS doctors and created
strange, contradictory, and yet important relationships between the two groups.
As the SS doctor Ernst B. told me, Auschwitz regulations strictly forbade
“fraternization” with prisoners; but, as he added, “the
psychological fact is that men cannot live together without
fraternization.” Living together in this sense meant having to work
together for at least some common goals.
Dr. B also said that
“the doctors wanted more hospital buildings, the others [SS Command] said
fewer and more fueling of the fire [the killing].” Whatever the
inconsistencies of SS doctors on that matter, the principle of more hospital
facilities and more actual healing appealed to their sense of themselves as
physicians even as it became consistent with official policy. And there were
occasions when they allied themselves with prisoner doctors against
representatives of command. For instance, Olga Lengyel told how Dr. Fritz Klein
befriended her owing to their common Rumanian language and origin in
Transylvania, and defended her against the threats |
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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 226 |
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