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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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230 |
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| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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to demonstrate this military subservience] . . .
. We did the work . . . . So you can control a whole country with a very few
men. You put the right boys [in] the right place. |
| Dr. Peter D. put a more positive value on the relationship:
Fischer became “a friend and colleague to such an extent that he would
never take someone from my work to send to the camp [select for death].”
Dr. Magda V. was struck by the use of such relationships to “kind of
spread the responsibility” in a situation within which “everybody
pushes the responsibility on someone else.” But for SS doctors there was
also the principle that Dr. B. has mentioned: their need to “escape into
this illusion ... that they were doing good professional medical
work.” |
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| SS Doctors and Women
Prisoner Doctors |
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SS doctors’ relationships with women prisoner doctors
were complex and could include elements of “chivalry” and at times
even affection, but also deception and danger. Rohde in particular could, as
Dr. Lottie M. put it, view the camp as a “war of German men against Jewish
men .... [but he] somehow helped the women and protected them.”² She
and others reported that he “was very much in love with our Jewish chief
doctor . . . [and] very impressed by her” in ways that enabled her to have
considerable influence with him. Dr. M described Dr. V as a “good-looking
and very intelligent woman”; and there were widespread rumors among
inmates that she became Rohde’s mistress. Some inmates attributed Magda
V.’s seemingly privileged status to this alleged affair, and it was a
factor in an attempt to bring charges against her in Czechoslovakia after the
war. On the basis of having been observed working closely with SS doctors and
going around with them, she was accused of complicity in selections — an
accusation Dr. M. considered “simply crazy,” because, as she pointed
out, Dr. V. was really doing everything possible to save lives.
Lottie
M. and Magda V., during separate interviews with me, expressed regret that
Rohde was hanged immediately after the war as they considered him,
respectively, “a better one” compared with other Nazi doctors, and
“in his own way a thoroughly decent chap.” Dr. V. somewhat
exaggerated Rohde’s virtue, maintaining the impression that “he
refused to do selections and went to the Russian front” (which was not the
case). She also said she chastised him for giving opinions, presumably
negative, about Jews without having known any: “How can you talk about the
Jews?” At the same time, she ridiculed accusations of both collaboration
and sexual liaison with Rohde, stressing the Nazi principle of
Rassenschande (“racial disgrace or crime”) that would apply to
sexual relations with a Jew: “I was only a Häftling
[prisoner], for crying out loud!” and, |
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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 230 |
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