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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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276 |
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| AUSCHWITZ: THE RACIAL CURE |
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The drug proved totally unfeasible for human
sterilization, but Himmler made clear that he considered such experimental
investigation of the greatest importance. He began to develop a file on what he
called “sterilization by medicines,” and a separate file on mass
sterilization by X rays (which we will soon examine in connection with
Schumann). Clauberg’s project could thus be seen by Himmler as a newly
scientific approach by a renowned professor, to “sterilizations by
medicines.”
But despite the professor’s high backing, the
enthusiastic support and involvement of Höss, and the required sponsorship
of Wirths, Clauberg had his difficulties at Auschwitz. He had considerable
personal conflict with many of the other doctors there, and he experienced
delays in acquiring the advanced radiological equipment he felt he needed. Most
problematic of all, he was caught in his own contradictions concerning the
efficacy of his sterilization method. He had always exaggerated that efficacy,
both out of ambition and under pressure from Himmler to produce, and produce
quickly, this revolutionary racial contribution to the Nazi project. On 7 June
1943, Clauberg wrote to Himmler attempting to justify his slow progress,
referred to “temporary difficulties” including his long wait for an
X-ray apparatus, and then engaged in some monumental double-talk: His method
was “as good as perfected” (so gut wie fertig ausgearbeitet)
but required a few “refinements” (Verfeinerungen), so that
“even today it could be put to practical use … [for] regular eugenic
sterilization”; indeed, he was now ready to reply to “the question
which you, Reichsführer, asked me one year ago — namely, how
much time would be required to sterilize one thousand women by this
method?” There were still hedges (“If my researches continue to have
the same results, ... the moment is not far off when I can say”) and
finally the anticlimactic declaration (with his own quotations and italics):
“One adequately trained physician in one adequately equipped place, with
perhaps ten assistants (the number of assistants in conformity with the speed
desired) will most likely be able to deal with several hundred, even if not
1000 per day.”14
The claim was still
fuzzy, to say the least, and it turned out that “the main reason” for
the letter was to request certain new arrangements (not clear from the letter
but probably having to do with Clauberg’s “sterilization race”
with Schumann) and another X-ray apparatus he had located in Berlin but for
which he needed Himmler’s approval. The underlying significance of the
letter is that combining Nazi political and biomedical ideologies and living up
to them medically, had contradictions and shortcomings — one might even
say inevitable failures. These contradictions together with Clauberg’s
general instability or “complexes,” took their toll. Wirths, the
chief doctor, was quoted to me as having said that Clauberg had
“completely gone to the dogs” and had become a severe alcoholic and a
“totally unscrupulous character.” And Wirths’s brother,
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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 276 |
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