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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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315 |
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| “A Human Being in an SS
Uniform”: Ernst B. |
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years of subsequent medical work: important medical
positions came to be “occupied by political people,” and even his
father’s professional eminence did not protect him from close scrutiny by
Nazi-appointed assistants on the lookout for potential political deviance.
Dr. B. did not consider himself a Nazi ideologue but, like many Germans
of the time, held “a positive attitude toward [the Nazis’] economic
successes and toward the possibility of reform [of society].” What made
him uneasy was the idea of people looking on him as someone who has been able
to get ahead because he “has [politically] cooperated,” and he was
especially intent upon convincing his mother and his future wife that such was
not the case. When the war broke out, that conflict contributed to a sense of
shame — sometimes aggravated by casual remarks people made — that a
healthy young man like himself was not “among the soldiers” fighting
for his country. |
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| Helping Prisoner Doctors |
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Once over his selections crisis, Dr. B. had no major
difficulties in Auschwitz. He consolidated a remarkable set of relationships
with prisoner doctors, about a hundred of whom were assigned to the Hygienic
Institute. While their situation was relatively benign for Auschwitz even prior
to his arrival, he went further than anyone else in concern for their
well-being. When they were sick he made. provisions for their medications and
general care and visited them himself. He helped them send messages to, and
arrange visits with, wives and friends in other parts of the camp. He
contributed to their survival by keeping them closely informed about various
Auschwitz currents and plans. And he directly saved lives in additional ways:
by protecting prisoner doctors from selections, by finding them and rescuing
them from the gas chamber when, they had, been selected, and by the benign
experiments discussed in chapter 15.
Prisoner doctors came to view him
as a very special figure — “perhaps the only one,” according to
Dr. Erich G., “mentally … consciously opposed to [Auschwitz and the
Nazis], …. the only one who really behaved [in a] friendly [way] to
doctors.” Another prisoner doctor thought Dr. B. “oddly out of place
in the SS,” was moved by both his concern when he was severely ill, and
B.’s later insistence that he not go back to work too soon but “just
lie outside in the sun and rest.” While a third doctor considered Dr. B.
“an educated research worker,” a fourth thought him “a very kind
man” but not especially bright: “We decided that … he was stupid
... because he was so nice with us.”
That decency had a powerful
impact on inmates (“Anyone who has never experienced the camp cannot know
how much real value such things have for morale”), according to one
doctor. And seeing Ernst B. as a man out of place in Auschwitz and the SS in
general, they searched for explanations of his being part of both. While they
were reasonably accurate in seeing him as “ordered there" (to Auschwitz)
by the SS (as |
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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 315 |
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